:)
Hello Everyone,

Acts 7:59 says: “They went on casting stones at Stephen as he made appeal and said: ‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.’” Those words have raised questions in the mind of some, since the Bible says that Jehovah is the “Hearer of Prayer.” Psalm 65:2 Did Stephen really pray to Jesus? Would this indicate that Jesus is the same as God Almighty?

I personally feel that Stephen was praying to God Almighty. Please allow me to explain why I feel this way:
The King James Version says that Stephen was “calling upon God.” Understandably, then, many draw the conclusion reached by Bible commentator Matthew Henry, who said: “Stephen here prays to Christ, and so must we.” However, that viewpoint is erroneous. Why?
Barnes’ Notes on the New Testament makes this honest admission: “The word God is not in the original, and should not have been in the translation. It is in none of the ancient [manuscripts] or versions.” How did the word “God” come to be inserted into that verse? Scholar Abiel Abbot Livermore called this “an instance of the sectarian biases of the translators.” Most modern translations, therefore, eliminate this spurious reference to God.
Nevertheless, many versions do say that Stephen “prayed” to Jesus. And the footnote in the New World Translation shows that the term “made appeal” can also mean “invocation; prayer.” Would that not indicate that Jesus is Almighty God? No. Vine’s Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words explains that in this setting, the original Greek word, e•pi•ka•le´o, means: “To call upon, invoke; . . . to appeal to an authority.” Paul used this same word when he declared: “I appeal to Caesar!” Acts 25:11 Appropriately, then, The New English Bible says that Stephen “called out” to Jesus.
What prompted Stephen to make such an appeal? According to Acts 7:55, 56, Stephen, “being full of holy spirit, gazed into heaven and caught sight of God’s glory and of Jesus standing at God’s right hand.” Normally, Stephen would have addressed his requests to Jehovah in the name of Jesus. But seeing the resurrected Jesus in vision, Stephen apparently felt free to appeal to him directly, saying: “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” Stephen knew that Jesus had been given authority to raise the dead. John 5:27-29 He therefore asked Jesus to safeguard his spirit, or life force, until the day when Jesus would raise him to immortal life in the heavens.

But this is just my humble opinion! What is your opinion on Acts 7:59?


Does Stephen’s exclamation at Acts 7:59 indicate that prayers should be directed to Jesus?

Take care,
Hope12

Jesus' model prayer in response to his disciple's request to teach them how to pray tells us to direct our prayers to Jesus' father just as he was doing when the request was made. So if we deviate from his example then we aren't following his instructions.

King James Version (KJV)

Luke 11:


1And it came to pass, that, as he was praying in a certain place, when he ceased, one of his disciples said unto him, Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples.

2And he said unto them, When ye pray, say, Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth.

3Give us day by day our daily bread.

4And forgive us our sins; for we also forgive every one that is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil.

Awesome question! As far as understanding the book of Acts goes, there is the basic understanding of its message to consider. Acts was written (most likely) by Luke, the same guy who wrote the Gospel according to Luke. The theme within Acts about Jesus is that He has been raised from the dead by God as vindication that Jesus is the Messiah and (here's that enigmatic phrase) "Son of God." Luke's theme concerning the followers of Jesus is that they have a mission to testify to the validity of Jesus' messiah-ship to the Jewish community and then the world. And the theme concerning the resurrection of Jesus is a theological one--there is some sort of power, the original power of God, that has been unleashed upon the world through Jesus' resurrection that transforms the world into something better, making both Jesus' followers and the rest of the world better people.

Now, with this in mind, it's easy to see that for Luke one would not necessarily pray in the name of Jesus (though I think Luke has Paul using Jesus' name in an authoritative way for exorcism and preaching purposes in Acts), either from his Gospel or Acts. However, I am sure you remember the words of Jesus from John's Gospel: "You have not prayed for anything in my name to the Father; ask anything in my name and it will be given you" from John 13 or 14. How did we get from praying to the Father because He is a good God in the Synoptic Gospels, to praying to God in the name of Jesus in John's Gospel, to praying to Jesus in the Early Church?

Historical theologians have put together a picture (though they freely admit that there are some holes because of missing information and this is just the best guess) of how this move was made. In the beginning of this movement, after Jesus was crucified/raised to life/ascended into heaven, Jesus' followers prayed to God; some probably prayed to God in Jesus' name (because they would be partially praying God's name--Jesus in Hebrew/Aramaic means "Yahweh is salvation"), but most probably prayed to God without the use of Jesus' name. Over time, the community started to pray to God in the name of Jesus as a whole because of his exalted position of being God's Son at God's right hand (thus, an image of Jesus ruling with God over the entire universe). Finally, by the time of the Early Church Fathers (A.D. 100-120), many Christians, though not all, were praying TO Jesus as God because he was seen as divine as the Son of God and because of some of the indicators of divinity they found in the Gospel accounts (miracles, fore-knowledge, Jesus resurrecting people and his own resurrection, etc.).

So here's the answer. Should we or should we not pray to Jesus? Yes and yes. One of the cool things about Christian theology is that you can make a case from Scripture, both Old and New Testament, that you can and should, or that you can't and shouldn't. The New Testament followers of Jesus were constantly grappling with how to understand Jesus as God's Son and Messiah, and thus we have a few different view points on it written at different times. While Luke at the time of his writing may not have felt comfortable with praying to Jesus, John's community did by the near end of the 1st century. Hope this helped:)

To question whether we can or should every pray directly to Jesus questions the root of the historic Christian faith - which for nearly 2000 years has called Jesus divine.

I, personally, agree with Thomas in addressing Jesus "My Lord and my God"... and I'm with the historic Christian faith that teaches that we can address prayer to our Lord and our God.

Well, we actually don't know the exact nature of the initial historisity of the Christian faith (no one really wrote down whether Jesus was divine in the sense of being God the Father, and none of us were there). We do have the New Testament, which hints at Jesus being divine, even indirectly suggesting that He was/is a divine being. However, the New Testament does not say "Jesus is God", only that "Jesus is Lord." Now the term "Lord" is used in the Septuagint (Greek translation of Old Testament) to refer to God; however, we don't exactly know if that's how the NT writers were using it, since the same term is used in the Gosples within the context of referring to Jesus as a Rabbi (which Rabbi's disciples would always refer to their Rabbi as "Teacher" or "Lord/Master"). Also, within both the ancient Near Eastern and Mediterrenean Greco-Roman world of the 1st century, someone or something could be divine without having to be fully God (like an angel). So we can't really say Christians have been saying Jesus is divine for 2,000 years (because they haven't).

Another issue in calling Jesus God is with making the connection of praying to Jesus as God. The NT writers never say that Jesus is God (until we get to John's Gospel--ca. A.D. 95) because they came from a very strict Jewish interpretation of monotheism ("Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord--one"); even if they all did believe Jesus to be God, they might have been afraid to say that because to their Jewish theological sensibilites, it may have sounded like heresy to them (and Jesus never came out and directly said, "I am God"; the most He did was say, "I am", using the Greek equivalent for God's name "I AM" in Exodus when Moses asks God His name). As for the Early Church Fathers, while it appears that many believed Jesus to be God in the second and third centuries, there were still many other Christian groups, especially in North Africa and the Near East, who did not believe Jesus was God, though they did believe He was some kind of divine being. It wasn't until A.D. 325 at the Council of Nicea that it became orthodox and therefore normative to believe that Jesus is God. And even after that council, many Christians in the East did not fully believe Jesus to be God for a few more centuries.

When Protestantism came on the scene, Luther and his followers believed Jesus was divine. But the Calvinist groups initially didn't believe it (because it wasn't specifically stated in the New Testament). However, in order to hold secular government or other political offices, everyone had to take an oath that they believed in the Trinity (it was written into secular law back in the 10th or 11th centuries, and they just kept it in there in the 16th and 17th centuries). Many Calvinist Protestants did take the oath, but within a short amount of time most of the Calvinist groups claimed to believe in the Trinity, or at least the Godship of Jesus.

While I believe Jesus to be God, I don't think we can honestly make this assertion about the New Testament Church and/or Early Christianity.

Others were resurrected before Jesus.
Moses, and other prophets also performed miracles, one even resurrected the dead as did the Apostle Paul. The prophets also had foreknowledge.
So why isn't this divinity criterion applicable to them as well?

Incorrect. We have not only the writings of the New Testament but also many other early writings. See many of them here.

Most of the early writings are after 100 A.D. When I said we don't exactly know the historicity of the Christian faith, I was not only thinking of 100-300 A.D. but also 30/31-99 A.D. The fact is, we don't really have that much information about the daily life or detalied notes on the worship practices of the New Testament communities or what specific things each community believed (and both the New Testament writings and archaeology confirm that there were different variations on Christianity in the 1st century depending on geographical region). We do, however, have a lot of information from the 2nd century about Christianity because those who left their writings decided to write more and include more details (as well as the Romans decided to take a full-fledged interest in us by this time).

However, I now regret having tried to answer this question using historical theology within Christianity. I may be wrong, but I sense that this is starting to become an argument, and I'd rather not play along. Besides, the initial question was prayer, not Christian roots (so, my bad on that one--sorry).

The idea that you could be some sort of divine person and not be God wasn't originated in Jewish thinking; it originated in Babylonian/Sumerian thinking before Abraham (and was then promulgated into Persian thinking when Persia took over Babylon), and it originated in the mystical/mythological Greek and Roman religions (where the gods and goddesses were coming all the time, sometimes in their full-blown glory, and sometimes specifically as humans, rather than just appearing to be human). This thinking never really took root in Palestine; it was rampant among all the Hellenistic religions of the 1st century and a form of it was seen in Diaspora Judaism (Judaism outside of Palestine).

Moses and the other prophets were never really seen this way by Jews outside or inside Palestine from 100 B.C to 150/200 A.D. (that's the time range I am familiar with; I don't know about their detailed thinking before or after these dates) because their religion did not teach them to consider them as divine. They were seen in the eyes of Judaism as ordinary humans who were graced with the privilege of being used by God; God was seen as working through them to do miracles rather than they actually doing the miracles (it was a long train of distancing people from doing the miraculous or from God dealing with people directly; it was a comfort thing).

That's why the Jewish people who believed in Jesus commonly thought He was a prophet or even the Messiah. They considered Him to be God's representative and God's spokesman; He had divine power, but only as much as God gave Him. But there were fringe Jewish groups who believed in prophets AND divine beings that were less than God (angels, the apocalyptic Son of Man, a cosmic Messiah, prophets who had died and were now divinized by God, etc.). Did that make sense and/or answer your question Starman?

Well, I guess we agree after all. The prophecies and miracles would not be interpreted by the jews as a sign of divinity but only as a sign that God was backing the person just as he had done with the other prophets. My question then is directed to those who do consider these things as proof of divinity and how they manage to reconcile the obvious contradiction.

Actually, it's not as contradictory as it first appears. The reason why Judaism by the time of Jesus had said there could be divine beings that were not God was to make sure that they kept a strict montheism intact (strict in the sense of conceiving of a "one God" religion in the human conception of what one means--only one thing or person that literally takes up time and space). Before the Babylonian exile, there appears to have been a thinking (that originated in Babylon/Sumer but was widespread in the ancient Middle East by about 1000 B.C.E) that there could be a multitude of divine personages, all of which could be equally gods. At the zenith of its political and pre-captivity theological formation, Israel seems to have thought of God as the divinity of Israel (He was powerful within the Israelite realm), but wasn't as powerful outside of it (this is reflected in archaeological findings from that time and from the Psalms). Though YHWH was Israel's God, they understood that other nations had their all-powerful deity. And they thought that surely God alone was to be worshiped, but that He must, like the other pagan gods, have an entourage or something. On many Israeli tombs from 1000 B.C.E. even down to 700 B.C.E. we find inscribed on sepulchres: "To YHWH and His Asherah", which was a female Canaanite goddess that usually attended the most powerful deity in that region.

After the Babylonian captivity (around 500 B.C.E. give or take a few decades), the Jewish religious and political leaders decided to avoid any kind of idolatry. Having been raised in Babylon, away from Israel, they were told the stories about how Israel angered God by worshiping idols and other foreign gods; in God's wrath, He gave His people over to the Gentiles to teach them to stop worshiping other gods and to worship only Him. Wanting to make sure a dispersion never happened again, the leaders started to take ultra-conservative views on the one-ness of God. Before Babylon came and destroyed Israel, the people seemed to think of God's oneness (if they thought of it at all) in terms of "only", to only worship YHWH; if you worshiped YHWH's Asherah, you were seen as really worshiping YHWH, not His companion. After the destruction at the hands of Babylon, God's oneness was seen more in terms of "one", as in the number one; there is only one (1) God that we worship.

After 500 B.C.E. the tendency was to re-read Scripture; instead of reading that God personally spoke to Moses in a burning bush, it was read that God gave His words to an angel, who in turn spoke them to Moses in a burning bush; surely the Almighty would not condescend to speak one-on-one to humans, it was reasoned. By the time of the Rabbis in about 100 B.C.E. this kind of thinking had calcified. Midrash, Jewish commentary on Scripture, told the reader to interpret the stories in such a way as shown above. This was not done because the religious teachers wanted to change Scripture; they never changed the words of Scripture, they just wrote about how to interpret it for the Jewish community. This was done, rather, to help all the Jewish people avoid idolatry, thus making sure God would not scatter His people to the far corners of the world as He had done once before. Though this move was well intentioned on the part of the religious teachers and leaders, it removed the personal contact God had with people (except through prophets who were viewed as more holy than anyone and regarded with a mysterious mysticism that bordered on perceived divinity), discarded things such as God doing miracles for people and instead God sending angels to do miracles because God surely would not communicate directly with sinful human beings, and caused the people to exalt the examples and stories of the Scriptural prophets from humble, human messengers of God (as appears in the Scriptures) to superhuman mythic figures and heroes who were somehow above the daily humanness of everyone else.

Now here is where I answer your question. In the 1st century after the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, this idea of Jesus being divine (in the sense of being God) because He did these things was picked up primarily by the Gentile believers, especially those not coming from the synagogue but rather from Hellenistic religions. These religions had retained this special quality of the gods doing miraculous things for people, thus proving that they were truly gods (however, I should point out that Hellenistic religions also kept their gods at a distance, so much so that they seemed to not even like people; at least the idea was still retained within Judaism that God truly loved and cared for people, even though He could not talk to them directly because of their sins).

Many of the Gentile Christians in the 1st century probably saw Jesus as God by looking at the Gospel stories through the religious environments in which they were raised. However, as these believers were continually taught the faith, it appears something must have changed; many scholars have expected that New Testament Gentile believers who saw Jesus as God would come out of the closet and say Jesus is God (not equal to but is in actuality the God of Israel, the Ancient of Days) by the beginning of the 2nd century (100 C.E.). However, as we know from history, they did not; in fact Christians, most of whom were not Jews but Gentiles after 100 C.E. were very hesitent to say that Jesus is God even up to the first quarter of the 4th century. While they felt comfortable calling Jesus the Son of God (since that was in the Gospels), they pretty much left the term open to interpretation. But as these Christians thought about Jesus' divinity throughout the 2nd and 3rd centuries, more and more of them were becoming convinced that God was to be viewed more in a trinitarian monotheistic vision. To Jews during the 2nd and 3rd centuries, Christians were viewed as weird monotheists--while they held some peculiar views about the Messiah, particularly in terms of Jesus of Nazareth, these followers of the Way were pretty much monotheists who held to the monotheistic view that Judaism did.

However, Christian leaders finally decided in the early 320's C.E. to come out and make a statement claiming Jesus to be God, and not just "Son of God." This statement of belief was met with a lot of resistance, especially in the East in modern-day Turkey, Palestine, and Iraq/Iran in the fertile soil of what would later produce the Greek Orthodox Church. In fact, Christians did not take the idea of Jesus as God to be a normative part of Christian belief until about 100-150 years after the Council of Nicea (C.E. 325). Christians still struggle with it today.

It's a little difficult to understand in this little response, so if I've confused you, by all means tell me and I'll try to sort things out. But I would like to point out that a lot of the phraseology in the Nicene Creed, regardless of whether the composers of it knew this, to prove the Godship of Jesus is taken directly from much of Apocalyptic Jewish literature dated between 200-50 B.C.E. So that's kind of interesting:) Did this... um... answer your question?

I understand you to say that those viewing the miracles that Jesus performed
Saw it as evidence that he was God because of they were influenced by Greek mythology in which such persons were viewed as gods. So there was no contradiction since they didn't share the Jewish viewpoint. Right?

In a sense, yes and no. Initially there was no contradiction in the minds of the Gentile believers who came from the Greek mythological background and from the mystery cults of the 1st century. However, there were probably many Gentiles who were connected to the synagogue who helped to bring something of a Jewish influence to the conception of Jesus (these Gentiles knew how to see the world through both Jewish and Greek eyes).

But the funny thing about Christianity is that it has always retained facets of Judaism, especially in how it viewed the world and interpreted it; even today Christianity sees the world not through Gentile eyes (though many of us are Gentile, to be sure) but through Jewish eyes. We don't know how much like Judaism Christianity looked in the first four or five decades (even centuries) after Jesus, but it was probably a lot because it was seen as just another sect within Judaism by both the Jews and the Romans.

I can't speak for the Gentile Christians 50 years before 100 C.E. (just because we don't have anything from or on them), but by the time we open the chapter of the Early Church in the year 100 C.E. and on, you would expect the Church to be using a lot of philosophy (probably in the Platonic and Aristotelian tradition) to prove that Jesus is God because most of the Church Fathers and leaders were Gentiles, not Jews. Ironically, they did use philosophy, but not to prove that Jesus is God, and they used it differently than we would expect. The Church Fathers were incredibly rooted in the Old Testament Scriptures, and amazingly, looked at the world through a Jewish viewpoint. I don't exactly know how or why, but my best guess would be Christianity itself. It is true that Gentiles took over the leadership and direction of Christianity after New Testament times, but Christianity is an ancient Near Eastern religion; there's only so much of it you can change before it ceases being Christianity.

So while the Gentiles had their own viewpoint and way of looking at the world, at Jesus, and at God in general, they also understood that the world, Jesus, and God would only make sense in Christianity if they were seen through the eyes of the Christian viewpoint, which was very Jewish. Okay, I think I did better with this one:)

Thanks for the very informative response!

Question:

So if the Jewish influence predominated so strongly among the eary church fathers how is it that eventually Jesus was viewed as God himself? How is it that the Nicene Council was attended by so many that chose to believe Jesus to be God?

Around 1,000 bishops, laity, theologians, and other Christian leaders were invited to the Council of Nicea, but only a number between 300 and 400 showed up. Some did not have the money to travel that far and did not want to burden their congregations in order to go; others thought it would be something of a joke to go because the Council was seen by them primarily as a fight between Christians over something undefined in Scripture.

Most of those who went to the council were from the Greek East (Asia Minor, Palestine, and the Middle East); the minority were those from the Latin West (modern-day Western Europe). So basically, only those who went to the council could go to the council. HOWEVER, most of those who attended the Council were against seeing Jesus as God Himself. Everyone there believed Jesus to be divine; the difference was in how each one interpreted that divinity. Most, by this time, saw Jesus as truly God, but only as God's Son, not as equal to the Father. By Jesus' resurrection, He became the Son of God (this is known as adoptionist Christology--Jesus was just a man, but when He was resurrected He was made divine and therefore God, yet only the Son).

When Bishop Athanasius of Alexandria claimed that Jesus had always existed as the Son of God, that Jesus was pre-existent with the Father and had no beginning, and was equal to the Father in essence (i.e. being God), he knew that he was going against the main thought of the day. He had read the writings of those who had gone before him, and he decided he would voice their opinions, of which he was persuaded were true, and come out boldly and tell the Church this form of Christology was more Biblical and more logical to the person and work of Jesus Christ. (The issue wasn't as clear-cut as Athanasius thought, but he was on to something. The writings of the major Church Fathers from the 2nd and 3rd centuries are actually split half-and half; a large portion believed in adoptionist Christology, while another large portion believed what Athanasius believed.) In Athanasius' time, what would later be called Arianism (adoptionist Christology) was deemed orthodox and this belief in the full-fledged, pre-existent Godship of Jesus was seen as either heterodox (different thinking from the Christian norm) or totally heretical. So those who believed Jesus to be equal to the Father were far outnumbered.

But how did Christians come to believe Jesus was God Himself? Well, the wording of the Nicene Creed is actually very vague when it comes to the nature of how much Jesus is God. It points out that Jesus was "begotten before all worlds" (an indication of when Jesus became God to the 4th century Christians), purposefully worded this way so that those who believed Jesus was created THEN designated as Son of God and those who believed Jesus was with God before time began could agree on the same Creed. Another phrase about Jesus' divinity is "being of one substance with the Father", which at first appears to us statement that Jesus is the same being as the Father. But that's not how they saw it.

Athanasius and his supporters wanted to use the phrase "being of the SAME substance with the Father." The adoptionist bishops, who were sympathetic to Arius and his Christology didn't like using the term "same substance", so they made a compromise and said "one substance." Thus, the adoptionist Christians could interpret that to mean "being of a similar kind of substance, thus being God, but not the same substance as the Father, thus not being the exact same as the Father"; likewise, Athanasius' side could interpret it to mean "being of the exact same substance as the Father, even though He is the Son, thus being equal to the Father in every respect but not being the Father." Are you confused yet, because it took me a few months in class until I finally started to understand each side's line of thinking.

In the end, the Nicene Creed resulted in something unsatisfactory for both sides. The adoptionist Christians felt like they had gotten swindled, and Athanasius and his supporters (which seemed to only be half of the bishops of Alexandria, one or two from Palestine and the Middle East, and the Bishop of Rome) felt like the Creed had not gone far enough to directly state "Jesus is God." But the Creed ended up the way it did for two reasons: 1)Athanasius was loud and obnoxious (as were his followers), and they kept putting their view before the assembly; 2)Constantine called for a quick decision, and then proceeded to say he liked Athanasius' point of view (Constantine liked the idea of a God coming down to earth as a man to save humans). So, the matter was temporarily settled. But that's why Christianity kept having so many meetings over the next 150-200 years about the divinity of Jesus.

Now, to answer your question, there are two main reasons Christians had started to view Jesus as God Himself. The first deals with simply seeing Jesus as divine in the sense of being God and not an angel. Paul Tillich, in his book "A History of Christian Thought", expresses it well (I think it's p. 50): "The christological issue for the Early Church was in salvation--who is doing the saving?" The Early Church Fathers were well versed in what is known today as the Old Testament Scriptures; they also knew the Gospel accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the main Gospels circulating among all the churches. As they read those Gospel accounts and read what Jesus said and did, all of them, to a greater or lesser degree, started getting a nagging idea that Jesus was more than just a man or God's Cosmic Messiah.

They found a surprising similarity in what God did in the Old Testament for the salvation of His people and what Jesus did for the salvation of other people in the Gospels (saving people from demon possession, leprosy, death, etc.). They found the way Jesus beat death by His resurrection very much like the glorious theophanies in the Old Testament when God revealed Himself to Israel for who He really was. And Paul's and John's letters and Gospel added to the thinking that Jesus was more than just a man or even an apocalyptic angel sent from God. Only God did these kinds of things in the Old Testament, so they started to think that maybe it was God who had done these things again in the time of the Apostles. But Jesus had always referred to God as "Father" or "Dad", and He had prayed to Him too. So this is where a trinitarian-monotheism started to develop: more than one personage within God, but still only one God.

Now we fast forward to the second reason. After the Nicene Creed, things changed. Before, the party of Athanasius and the party of Arius were trying to prove that they were right under the guise that they were doing the Church a favor. No one had ever thought about these issues as deeply or as long as either of these two men did, so many initially just watched and weighed the both men's arguments. But after a while they saw that they had to take sides, which caused this theological situation to become embroiled with TONS of emotion on both sides. Ironically however, things died down as the years passed. As people grew older and finally died on each side, more and more emotion/theological baggage was laid to rest in the sands of time. The newer generations, being raised around this issue (thus getting to hear about both sides), were being swayed more and more with Athanasius' view. Finally, after about 150-200 years, the new Church leaders could make a definitive statement about Jesus being God without upsetting too many feathers (it still took, I believe, another 200-300 years for the idea of Jesus being God pre-existently to become normative of orthodoxy for both the West and the East). Once this was in place, it was natural to see Jesus as God Himself. If Jesus is equal to the Father in every respect, then even though He is the Son of God, He is, technically, also the Father.

Basically, the Early Church Fathers wanted to make sure their salvation was secure. The question of Christology was asked because the overwhelming impression was that only God could save all humanity to this magnitude; no one, not even a divinized human, could accomplish this. Therefore, Jesus must be God. Those after the Nicene Creed took this thought up, embraced it, and simply ran with it to its obvious theological end (since it was now firmly in place rather than accepted by only some, however large that some was).

Did this answer the question, or have I confused you?

Sorry, my bad. Your two questions were great, but there's so much history behind both and they're both really involved. But still, it's my bad. :D

No confusion at all. It answers the question very well. Thanks.

But there is still one point which is baffling.
God worked his miracles through the prophets and they were never considered God, why would Jesus miracles alone be seen as a justification to view him as God? Jesus healed and resurrected, the prophet Elijah did so as well. Jesus prophesied. So did the prophets. Jesus claimed to represent God. So did the prophets. Jesus spoke in God's name. So did the prophets. Jesus ascended and so did Elijah.


BTW
I read also about the Eastern Emperor Theodesious and how he had been instrumental in forcing the last remnants of Arianism in the West among the Germanic tribes which had toppled the Western Roman Empire to accept the Athaneisian Trinitarian view via military action.

About Jesus' miracles, etc. I actually don't know; I never looked into it. But that's an interesting question; if I have time in the near future, I'll look into it:) However, I have an idea. The Old Testament Scriptures always had the Prophets doing miracles by the power of God; either the text directly says that God told this prophet or that prophet to do this miracle, or the text has a prophet praying to God, God answering the prayer, and working a miracle on behalf of the prophet. Either way, the Old Testament Scriptures made sure to present God as the direct source of the miracles. But not so in the New Testament. The main Gospels that the Church Fathers dealt with and knew (though they each knew one or two others on average than just these) were the Gospels we have in our New Testament today, and these Gospels were seen as the most authoritative works on the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

In the Synoptic Gospels, we don't find any part of the text in any of the Gospels presenting the formula for miracles in the same way as the Old Testament did; rather, they just say that Jesus did this or that miracle. Also, we find John kind of instituting a God-Prophet formula, but not in the same way as the Old Testament Scriptures. John claims that every miracle Jesus did was inextricably connected to God, but in the sense of glorification, not source of power; John either says, "Jesus did this to demonstrate His power", usually for the sake of those attempting to believe in Him, or "Jesus did this to bring glory to God." But John is even more pointed in presenting the miracles as coming from Jesus, and not from God through Jesus. That probably left many of the Church Fathers with the impression that it was Jesus doing the miracles by His own power, and not the higher power of the God of Israel. And if that's so, they thought, He must be God in some sense because only God is the true Source of miracles and things supernatural.

But like I said, I don't really know; if what I have said is accurate, this might be only one of MANY things that contributed to this kind of thinking. I do know this, though: by the time of 100 B.C.E. and onwards (so well into the entire 1st century, both contemporaneous and after the time of Jesus) the Jewish interpretation of miracles, the power of God, and prophets and what they potentially meant for Israel and the world had drastically changed from the times of 700-500 B.C.E. I don't know exactly how it changed (historically), and I'm only familiar with two or three of the basic ways it was different (as I showed earlier). That's really more of an Intertestamental specialty (I haven't quite gotten there in my studies yet, but I will). Oh, and Elijah was never resurrected (according to the text); he was taken to heaven without seeing death:)

As for Theodosius, you're right; he did use military might. He saw himself as one of a long line of kings/ceasars who came from the line of Constantine the Great. Just as Constantine used the sword to bring people to Christ, so too Theodosius felt justified in doing this as well. After all, he reasoned, it's love for "heathen" souls and their salvation that drives him to force them to come under the banner of the Church.

Jesus told his followers to pray to the Father.

Jesus is the Son, he is not the Father.

Stephen saw Jesus in vision as he was being stoned, and he was standing at the right hand of God - the Majesty on High.

There is nothing in the Bible other than the forged passage in 1 John 5.7 that supports any view other than that the father and the Son are separate individuals each with his own will and being.



M:)

Monotheism in the Old Testament is introduced and is not supported from its earliest passages which were openly pluralistic. In spite of efforts by later rabbis and scribed to expunge both polytheism and anthropmorphism the Old Testament remains full of references that cannot be understood in any other way that as plural as in 'elohim', and anthropomorphic, although it is more accurate to say that man is theomorphic as described in Genesis 1-3..

If you are convinced that the wording of the Nikean Creed is from Jewish Apocalyptic, I would like to see how you arrive at that conlcusion by putting forward the words and references for each. That would be of great interest.

M:)

Yeah, I know; at most, the earlierest texts of the Old Testament Scriptures support henotheism (I think I said that right), the idea that there might be many other gods, but they don't matter to us; we only worship this god/these gods.

I don't know if we can actually say that the rabbis and scribes attempted to expunge any anthropomorphic or polytheistic references from Scripture. The rabbis were the ones who interpreted Scripture; so while they may have said, "This text really means this, not what it actually says", they really weren't involved in changing the words of the texts themselves (though they were responsible for producing a lot of the Targums and Midrash on Scripture--which are really fun to read!). The scribes actually had a better chance of changing the wording of the texts, since it was their job to know intimate details of halakha and haggada and to produce copies of the Scriptures for priests and synagogues, etc. I can maybe see a few scribes changing the words during the Intertestamental Period (just because you never know), but not many; by around 400 B.C.E. the scribes had respect for the Scriptures, even if they didn't necessarily like what they had to say (they viewed the Scriptures almost as holy and divine as God Himself).

Actually, what I said was that phrases (i.e. phraseology) came from Apocalyptic Jewish literature, not the creed itself; the creed is most likely from a familiar baptismal creed used in Ceasaria by Eusebius (I'd also like to make a correction here: it seems that the literature would be not from 200-50 B.C.E. but rather B.C.E. 200 to 200 C.E.). The Church Fathers were also very familiar with both Apocalyptic Jewish and Christian literature, and even quoted it sometimes in their sermons or works. Apocalyptic Jewish literature heavily influenced Apocalyptic Christian literature and Christian thinking in general.

The phrases "begotten from the Father before the worlds", "light from light", "begotten, not made" are the closest things we have to direct quotations from those Jewish texts; I believe they come from the Wisdom of Solomon. Some (I believe) are not word-for-word quotes, but rather idea-for-idea quotes (it is very rare in Patristic writings for one to find exact quotes made, since there were always a few slightly different versions of many writings floating around and it was rare in that age to make an exact replication of the quote used--kind of makes it fun to look for sources, doesn't it?) From a cursory look at the line of thought from 100 C.E. to 300 C.E. it appears that the Christian communities appropriated Apocalyptic Jewish concepts, ideas, and words into their vocabularies to help articulate to themselves what they believed, etc. So that is why I said the Nicene Creed owes a lot of the terminology to Jewish thinking. It is very difficult, in actuallity, to pinpoint exactly which book these ideas are coming from, because there are many books that convey the same ideas. (I once did a project on that--seeing the Apocalyptic Jewish influences on Early Christian literature and trying to figure out where it's coming from; I think on average I had about 2 or 3 sources for each theological idea.)

But the Creed itself is Christian; it is basically a baptismal confession made normative for the Church Universal, and not just a single church. Did this answer your question?:)

Theodosius considered the Germanic tribes heretical because they
Disagreed with him in reference to Jesus. Imagine if he hadn't interfered in their worship. That would have changed the present scenario quite a bit.


John 3:13. No man hath ascended up to heaven.

About Elijah, I don't believe that he died on that occasion. But neither do I believe that his ascension was into the spirit realm or heaven itself. Why? Because further on he is mentioned as being alive and well; and having sent a written message to the king.


Excerpt:

By Garner Ted Armstrong

No MAN has ascended to the heaven of God's throne! ELIJAH was taken up, by a miracle, into the AIR, and was transported safely away to some other location. Years later Elijah was taken to a place of security, a letter was received by Jehoram, the new king in Jerusalem.

Notice! "And there came a writing to him from Elijah the prophet, saying, 'Thus saith the Eternal God of David thy father, "Because thou hast not walked in the ways of Jehoshaphat thy father, nor in the ways of Asa king of Judah.. . " ' " (II Chronicles 21:12-15). Then followed a description of the horrible fate that Elijah, who was STILL ALIVE, described would occur to Jehoram!

http://www.garnertedarmstrong.ws/pubs/Elijah-Heaven.htm


About Jesus:

Jesus prayed before performing miracles. If indeed the power was from himself then prayer for assistance would have been unnecessary.

Jesus prayed before healing the crowds.. .

Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. (NIV) Mark 1:35

Jesus prayed before He fed over 5,000 people.. .

Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then he gave them to his disciples to set before the people. He also divided the two fish among them all. (NIV) Mark 6:41

Jesus prayed before healing the man who was deaf and mute.. .

He looked up to heaven and with a deep sigh said to him, "Ephphatha!" (which means, "Be opened!"). (NIV) Mark 7:34

Jesus prayed before bringing the dead back to life.. .

So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, "Father, I thank you that you have heard me. 42 knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me." 43 When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!" (NIV) John 11:41-43

http://www.mostmerciful.com/notgod--1-7.htm


Here is another issue that puzzles me about Jesus being seen as God himself.
It necessitates that we call the Israelites misguided, confused, misinformed, duped for centuries while at the same time admitting that their prophets were inspired of God and conveyed accurate knowledge recorded for mankind's benefit.

BTW

The magic practicing priests performed the same miracles Moses was performing up to a point. Also, Jesus tells us that there would be those claiming to be his followers who would perform miracles and yet they would be evil. So all miraculous works are not necessarily of God.

For false Christs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and miracles to deceive even the elect—if that were possible. (Mat 24:24)