Christian doctrine despite the Bible not saying what a being is and what a person is, there is no glossary, says it teaches that there are three persons in God, the Father, Jesus the Son and the Holy Spirit. The notion of a God without parts and material composition came from rationalist pagan philosophy. That is what is meant by spirit. The Bible word spirit is really breath and breath is a material force. The Trinity notion falls apart without the pagan understanding of spirit. Plus that notion is not philosophy. You may think there is something non-material in your head, maybe your thoughts, but that does not mean they are really non-material. And if they were it would not mean there could be a God spirit who is all knowing and all good and all powerful. There is no rational argument to show that the notion of something without parts can be real.
JOHN 10:30 has Jesus say. “I and the Father are One”. When Jesus said this after promising to bestow eternal life, the Church says the Jews tried to kill him by stoning for making himself God.
When one studies the context it is made plain that their response may not have been caused by this utterance but by the promise that he would give eternal life which seemed to make him God. The cited utterance itself is no proof that he claimed to be divine. A man and his wife are one (Genesis 2:24). Jesus said that a man and his wife were one flesh. He didn’t mean that literally so why should we take this verse literally? It is most reasonable not to.
Some scholars say the most accurate translation of the text is, “I and the Father are one essence or nature.” They are thinking of a divine nature. This is because the word for one is hen which is neuter. If they are right then Jesus said that he and God were of the same substance. But what if that wording was to show how intimate they were though they weren't literally the same substance?
Jesus never said that his relationship with God was beyond our understanding. When a person says something that could be interpreted in a simple sense or in a paradoxical and incomprehensible sense we should veer towards the first sense. Even if Jesus said he was one substance with the Father we have to take him as not meaning one being for we can’t make sense of that. It is silly to argue that they would have lifted the rocks to stone him before he got a chance to say he was one with the Father if it was the everlasting life promise that bothered them. Maybe they just wanted to hear what else he had to say and let him finish before they grabbed the stones?
The cited utterance on its own was inoffensive for it was biblical as Jesus explained later. So what the Jews were disgusted by was his saying that he gives eternal life and nobody can take it away which seemed to be claiming that God made him the saviour and the boss but not necessarily God.
Jesus asked the Jews what good work they were going to stone him for. In other words, he had no offensive meaning in what he said. Thus he did not mean he was God for he could not blame them for wanting to stone him when their creed told them to stone anybody that said he was God. They said that it was not for good but for saying he was God. The passage does not say that they were telling the truth. But John stresses Jesus’ infallibility so good works were the real reason. Jesus was saying there was nothing in what he said that could justify the ignorant stoning him. A person who thought Jesus blasphemed would be entitled to but he is nobody could think that.
Against their complaint that he was a man making himself God he declared referring to a Psalm, "Is it not written in your Law: 'I God have said you are gods''? If he called them gods to whom the word of God came - and the scripture cannot be broken - then what about the One whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world? How then can you accuse Me of blasphemy for stating that I am the Son of God?"
He went on that if he is not doing the works of God then they must not believe him but if he is they should believe because of the works rather than because they trust him.
You will notice the passage is a mess. If he wants to be seen as God then why does he use, "I am the Son of God"?
And there is no rationality in asking a person not to trust you because of your good character but to trust you because of the works you do!
Psalm 82 speaks of gods or elohims meaning judges and verse 7 says they will die so they don't seem to be very divine. This is like Exodus 22:9 where it mentions human judges. The implication is that they are like God for they have his sanction to judge. This is a hidden affirmation of the Bible's ban on gay sex. Jesus then told the Jews that if he claimed to be divine it was in the sense that the Scriptures called anyone who heard God’s word divine or gods. He clarified that they could not accuse him of blasphemy when the Law called them gods. They could if the Law meant it symbolically and he meant he was literally divine so if the Law was symbolic so was his claim. This is proof that John’s gospel is not the great book that was written to say that Jesus was God that many scholars think it is. Jesus is saying that he is as much God as those who hear God’s word is. There is nothing else he could have meant. He claimed to be divine but not literally divine. He called himself God as a symbolic way of saying he was God’s supreme representative.
We must add that as the Psalm complains about the sins of the judges, Jesus is saying, "It calls sinful men godlike judges so why can't I call himself the godlike judge too and indeed the ultimate one?" Jesus denies that he means he is divine in the way God is, he says he has human divinity and even more so than any of those men.
Christians argue that Jesus was being ironic, "If you call those dying creatures gods why can't you see I am fully God for they don't compare to me?" But a poetic psalm cannot be used to make that point and the Jews did not call anybody gods. The logic does not follow. Men being called gods cannot mean that Jesus is God. In reality as a creature who was to die, Jesus was putting himself in their own league. He was just another "god". He was a honorary God not really literally God and neither were any of those people.
The Christian idea that Jesus means he was more entitled to be called literally God than they were to be called symbolically divine makes no sense and is blatantly incoherent. Everybody and everything is symbolically divine.
What about the notion that Jesus claimed everybody was as much a God or divine as he was? They would surely not have needed a Bible verse to tell them that. That is something one should know. It would mean that anybody could be the way and the truth and the life for everybody is. So why make Jesus special then? The god you know is better than one who is gone 2000 years.
Contrary to The First Letter of St John you can love the child and hate the father. John says that you cannot because if you love God you will love God’s Son and the other children of God for he who loves the daddy loves the child the daddy makes (5:1). Some reason that this could only be right if we are all incarnations of God as much as Jesus was meaning that to hate the persons who are God is to hate God the Father for they are all one God. That could be taken in a pantheistic sense. But my view is that John was just manipulating logic to trick his followers so that they would think they hate the father when they hate the child.
The verses that deny that Jesus was literally God come before the ones that seem to say that he was because it is more reasonable and respectful to God to deny that he was God. A man claiming to be God is insane if he means he thinks he can split the sun in two on a whim. But not if he thinks of God as some kind of program, force or whatever.
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