God and Jesus same person? Help me understand

[LoveSummerLife]

Can anyone explain the basis for the belief in God and Jesus being the same person? Which bible verses indicate this? I was brought up C of E but my faith has lapsed over the years and part of the reason is I can’t get my head around this. The Son of God made flesh and sacrificing himself to gain salvation for us, okay, but the actual same person? Is there a biblical basis for it or has the church (as an institution) concluded it?
Is it all based on John 1:1? What about other verses where Jesus was referring to his Father in a different way such as John 14:28.
Sometimes John 10:30 and 38 are used to explain it but I think of those verses as being more about unity, a husband and wife are distinct people but might refer to themselves as being “one” on certain issue’s as they are in unity.

TYIA for trying to help me understand

Yes, well, we're going to end up discussing the inspired scriptures at some point, and I would at that stage be firm that you can't divorce the scriptures from the community from which they came, which is the church. The scriptures didn't drop down from heaven full formed, they are a product of an ongoing church community, and therefore, only the simplest fundamentalist reading of said scriptures would divorce them from the wealth of documents and history that go along with the scriptures, and would, unsurprisingly, come up with all sorts of different conclusions.

Because that's what happens with any text which is divorced from it's context. You can proof text and play text tennis all day long if you want to. But that approach always looks like bibliomancy to me. Personally, I've had my lifetime's fill of fundamentalism. The bible seems to me to have much more power in the setting of the sweep of church history, where many minds who have been filled with the Holy Spirit have wrestled with these questions and resolved them, sometimes many, many centuries before any marked percentage of believers could even read.

If no one has any objections, I would like to post the mention of Jesus (peace be upon him) in the holy Qur'an and how Muslims understand who he was and why we have to believe in him as a mightiest messenger of Allah (God).

It will be a translation of the Qur'an from Arabic (the Qur'an is only in Arabic and it is the exact same letter by letter as it was revealed over the, 1,400 years ago. There is only a single Arabic language Qur'an regardless of which sect of Muslim, Shia, Sunni etc. that is one the miracles of the Qur'an that not a single letter has changed from the original revelation) .

I hope that it will encourage dialogue between the people of the scriptures (Jews, Christians and Muslims) and not hatred or suspicions as some people would like to highlight.

Those who believe in God should know that it is God who will judge between us where we differ in the hereafter so why should we fight amongst ourselves?

We need to live on this planet in peace and with justice for everybody.

Well, I have no objections, as it's a public message board, and I hold no animosity towards Muslims, but the references to Jesus in the Quran were written centuries after His earthly existence and bear no relation to any of the communities that followed Him. Though they do show that Muhammad seemed to have had contact with some of the quirkier Christian sects knocking about. I've always found them odd references, like the Jesus in them is just sort of a name drop, but they certainly exist as references and if you think it would add anything to the thread, then fair enough.

Great post, FloralBunting. And just as you can't divorce the sayings of Jesus from revealed tradition over NT and church history, you can't pick them out of Jewish tradition and Jesus' understanding of himself so firmly grounded within Torah and the scriptures. So when Jesus makes the 'I am' claims it immediately got Jewish leaders' backs up because only YHWH spoke in terms of 'I am'. In fact, he said 'I tell you the truth, before Abraham was born, I am!'' in John 8:58. Jesus' mindset cannot be discovered by cherry-picking individual sayings in isolation, but in the overarching meaning and aim of Jesus’ public career and teachings within the constraints of C1 Judaism. So Jesus' use of the phrase 'son of man' came heavily loaded with notions of divinity because of scripture which the leaders knew so well. Couple that with Jesus claiming to forgive sins, and you have a perfect storm for them, a man engaging in high blasphemy because he is claiming to do things only God can do. His actions were subversive to the culture and infused with a self-understanding that he was in essence with God; he healed people on the Sabbath, an action which found him hounded for his rebellion against God's law, because it was his law to interpret.

It's interesting Funky that you use the book of John to illustrate your claim that Jesus wasn't God but a separate entity, yet it's the book that makes the claim that 'the Word was with God and the word was God' in the very first verses, so the theology of John was very much grounded in this understanding. If you want to take some verses you must look at all verses, you must contextualise them and apply textual criticism to the whole. Jesus called God his father because the Godhead is father, son, spirit, but also said he and the Father are one. He talked about being in the father and the father being in him. He said that anyone who has seen him has seen the Father. In John 17 he prayed 'and now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.' He said 'If you knew me, you would know my Father also'. (John 8:19) again, that essence with the Father which was picked up by the very earliest creedal statements which we know were in use an astoundingly short times after the resurrection and ascension of Jesus - of Jesus being the image of the invisible God, of being 'in very nature God.'

I'm trying to illustrate that taking certain words in isolation is not a robust way of embellishing a point. We should take the history, context and all the words said by Jesus. We should study the early church understanding and link it to the Jewish understanding of God, and we should perhaps most importantly look at all the words and actions of Jesus, words where he explored his relationship with and oneness with the Father, actions where he proved his divinity and demonstrated his incarnational love for all.

There is no doubt in my mind Jesus understood himself to be a part of the unity of the Godhead, of the one God expressed in three persons, and that this understanding was communicated to the gospel writers and to the early church, who worshipped him as such.

@madhairday I think my points deliberately don’t cherry pick verses. I agree that I give the scriptures precedence over church teachings and that is part of the OP’s original point surely.

You pick out John 1:1 which I agree should not be read in isolation, and you will know the lengthy debates available on the clarity of the English translation of this text.

I am interested to know, In your mind, considering all the things Jesus did which you mentioned in your post, does his authority come from the Father or does he have this in his own right?

does his authority come from the Father or does he have this in his own right?

I know this question was directed at Madhairday but I would love to post concerning my own understanding concerning this matter.

Considering Jesus did not sin and He was the same as the Father in thought and deed, then the authority is simply from God manifest in Jesus. Surely whatever is the same as God is God manifested? God manifested is God. Since Jesus did not sin, that is He did not deviate from God's will, then He is the same and God is manifested in Him.

does he have this in his own right?

But their is no 'his own right' because Jesus is not separated from God. They have unity. Jesus did not sin.

I am interested to know, In your mind, considering all the things Jesus did which you mentioned in your post, does his authority come from the Father or does he have this in his own right?

Good question, @FunkySnidge, which goes right to the heart of Christology.

A quick response - I am out in a minute. Scripture makes it clear that Jesus was with God from eternity past, that Jesus brought all things into being, so it's evident that he has had an authoratitive role within the Godhead or Trinity. In his incarnation Jesus sets aside his equality with God (see Philippians 2) - although in nature God, he made himself nothing, taking on the form of a servant, humbling himself. After his resurrection he is 'exalted to the highest place.' But within the constraints of his earthly incarnation, the authority must be given to him by the Father. In the great mystery, he is th Son, the essence of the Father and the Spirit, yet in human flesh. And so in Matthew 28 he says this:

'All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.'

In this he both claims he is given the divine authority, and that followers then make other followers by using his name as well as the Father and the Spirit, claiming his equality which will be reinstated at his death and resurrection.

I have more, but have to go...

Surely whatever is the same as God is God manifested? God manifested is God. Since Jesus did not sin, that is He did not deviate from God's will, then He is the same and God is manifested in Him.

Yes - this too!

Really must go.

@Redpostbox put it exactly how I understood it from what I was taught during my Sunday school days and then continued at a catholic school.

I am not a catholic and I am not too sure I would describe myself as a Christian anymore

1 John 5:7 is one of the clearest verses about the Trinity:

"For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one."

However, you'll only find it in the Majority text, as used by the King James version. The minority Alexandrian texts that are used for the modern versions don't make it at all clear.

Some people will refer to Mark 10:18 & Luke 18:19 and claim that it was Jesus' way of denying that He was God, but I've always understood it as His way of affirming that He was. "Why do you call Me good; only God is good." Surely, if He'd intended to deny it rather than lead them to realise the implications of what they'd said, He would have categorically done so e.g. "Don't call me good, because only God is good and I'm not God."

I think that the depiction of Jesus in the Quran, that of a human prophet, is likely to be closer to Jesus’s own self-conception than the divine saviour notion which became established within Gentile Christianity after his death.

While it may seem strange at first blush, since Islam is a much younger religion than Christianity, I have come to think this way through looking into the Ebionites, an early Jewish Christian group, whose theology is thought to have had some influence on Islam.

The old Catholic Encyclopedia entry on the Ebionites begins :

By this name were designated one or more early Christian sects infected with Judaistic error.

The encyclopaedia entry continues:

Recent scholars have plausibly maintained that the term did not originally designate any heretical sect, but merely the orthodox Jewish Christians of Palestine who continued to observe the Mosaic Law. These, ceasing to be in touch with the bulk of the Christian world, would gradually have drifted away from the standard of orthodoxy and become formal heretics.
…

Some Ebionites accept, but others reject, the virginal birth of Christ, though all reject His pre-existence and His Divinity.

The crux of the matter is, then, who actually drifted? Who were the heretics and who were the orthodox followers?

It seems to me far more likely that the Ebionites, who traced their lineage back to James and the Jerusalem Church, and who did not move away from the sociocultural influences of the Middle East, stayed true to the way Jesus was seen by his original Jewish followers. In other words, the Ebionites didn’t drift, they didn’t mysteriously demote Jesus, rather the gentile Christians promoted him to divine status. The notion of a God-man arose in the Pauline branch of Christianity but would have been anathema to his earliest Jewish followers and their descendants, who saw him as a cherished, charismatic prophet, just like Muslims do.

The connection between Ebionite theology and Islam has been noted by a number of scholars.

Muhammad was influenced by his first wife Khadijah’s cousin who was said to have been an Ebionite priest, the Ebionites having gone into exile after the fall of Jerusalem and having some sort of presence in Arabia hundreds of years later, still carrying a torch for Jesus.