to forgive sins would have been something that Jesus already possessed. It also shows, second, that the power to forgive sins had been given to men—and here the man under consideration was Jesus. Is Matthew writing of the people’s perception or his own spiritually informed perspective about Jesus as a man and only as a man?
Jesus as the Revealer or Image of the Father
At this point I feel compelled to say that none of the observations that Irons makes negates an understanding of Jesus’ status as Son of God as Messiah. If Jesus had a heavenly preexistence, he would have knowledge of the Father that he could indeed uniquely communicate to others. Revelation is indeterminate regarding the period of time or the nature of the Son’s existence with the Father in heaven before his advent. So I am not one who thinks of Jesus as a “mere creature.” Certainly I share with Irons an understanding that there are humanly unknowable details about the relationship of the Father and the Son before he became the man Jesus. I implied as much in my first paragraph of this presentation. Yet Irons quotes John 14:9–10 without comment on what Jesus means when he tells Philip that to see him is to see the Father. We cannot even get an idea of what he means when, in the next sentence, he quotes Jesus who says, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). Jesus says in the same book that his disciples are to be “one” as he and the Father are one; and he adds that they in him and he in them share the same oneness (John 17:21–23).
The best picture of being “one” that is understandable (since Irons offers no commentary) is that Jesus is talking about unity of the believing community as they seek to have a better understanding of God’s nature and heart. Certainly Jesus is spoken of in exalted terms. In saying Jesus is “the image of the invisible God” (Col 1:15), however, is to admit that he is not the same as God. Jesus in an eikōn, a “likeness, image, or portrait,” of another. It is decidedly not the real thing. Even to describe Jesus as the charaktēr of God (Heb 1:3) is to present Jesus not as the real God, but as a stamp or an engraved likeness impressed into a piece of metal like Washington on a quarter or Jefferson on a nickel.
This is not to detract from what Jesus is, but it is to guard against saying what he is not—God himself. Jesus can communicate God, represent God, reveal God, imitate God, provide the highest pixel resolution of God possible on one’s computer or mobile device, but he is not God himself. Irons will, as we shall see, join Bauckham and use other terminology, but it means the same thing (or something polytheistically worse for Trinitarians if God and one who shares in his identity is another entity!). Irons cites Col 2:9 which states that the fullness of deity lives in Jesus in bodily form. Could anything be greater? Yet is it not true that Paul prays that each believer in Ephesus be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God also (Eph 3:19)? Does not Peter assure his readers that it is possible for them to participate in the divine nature (share in God’s identity?) and escape the world’s corruption caused by evil desires (2 Pet 1:4)?
Irons believes that all of this inheres in Jesus’ identity as God’s Son, but not because the Son is the Messiah, but rather because the Son comes from God. This is because he does not see that the penultimate revelation of God announced on the day of Pentecost is very great indeed: Jesus was formally proclaimed Lord and Messiah at that time. The Dan 7:13–14 prophecy that the Messiah (a Son of Man) would enter into God’s presence and receive authority, glory, and sovereign power, and that he would be worthy of universal worship, reigning over an eternal kingdom, was fulfilled. Irons indicates further in his essay an appreciation for certain aspects of this paragraph, particularly regarding Ps 110:1 and Dan 7:13–14. Darrell L. Bock makes clear that Jesus’ castigation of the Jewish leaders in the context of claiming for himself a place at the right hand of God coming against them in judgment is what pushed the Jewish leaders to the edge in condemning Jesus. Jesus also claimed to be the Christ, which, although it may not be the main reason for his condemnation, could not have been welcome, a claim coming from one whom they saw as being unworthy for a number of reasons.47
Preexistence and Incarnation
I have very little disagreement with this section of Irons’s essay I wonder, though, why Irons can speak of Jesus as preexistent Logos who “existed as a divine being distinct from God.” Although he seems to embrace the historic view of the Trinity as set forth in The Westminster Confession of Faith, he uses the word Trinity only twice and within only an inch or two of space of each reference to it, and has a very unconventional but apparently scholar-welcome (e.g., Richard Bauckham) conception of it. The references he gives from John’s Gospel and the Johannine epistles seem on-target (at least, I agree with his brief listing of them), and I can even agree that Phil 2:5–11 may very well be a very early statement of Christian understanding predating liberal scholarship’s erroneous view that the high Christology found in the Gospel of John is something developed and finalized well into the second century.
Two Tests of Ontological Deity
Creation
Without question Jesus is set forth in Scripture as being creator (John 1:3, 10; Col 1:16; 1 Cor 8:6).48 Irons examines the wording of all the passages emphasizing the all-inclusive language in which both “Paul and John go out of their way to eliminate any exceptions.” But note that, for example, Hebrews 2:8 says that “God has put all things in subjection under [Christ’s] feet. For in that he [God] put all in subjection under him, he left nothing that is not put under him.” Someone might read Heb 2:8 without acknowledging Scripture as a whole and argue against the existence of any exception to those things that are put under Christ.
However, 1 Cor 15:27 shows that there is an exception to “all things” under Christ, saying: “When he saith all things are put under him [Jesus], it is manifest that he [God] is excepted, which did put all things under him.”49 The idea that is presented is that given certain things one would understand from prior knowledge based on other Scripture, some things are manifestly excepted. Leaving theological presuppositions aside before making lexicographical decisions permits taking the Greek word prōtotokos to pertain literally to birth order (as applied to Jesus in Col 1:15).50 Consider also Jesus’ affirmation that the Father granted that the Son would have life in himself (John 5:26). He also says in connection with his sending commission by God, “I live because of the Father” (John 6:57). Jesus came into being as first-born from (Gk. ek) God, and the rest of creation came into existence through the agency of (Gk. dia) Christ.
Aseity
Irons presents several examples of attributes of God which he says are tests of his ontological deity. Indeed, he joins Herman Bavinck in affirming aseity as what may be the primary attribute of God’s being. These are characteristics that only God has from himself. Then regarding John 5:26 he observes that God who has life in himself grants that status to Christ. One cannot have that which he has not obtained, so there is a logical problem with Irons’s understanding of the biblical phrase “has life in himself” as applied to Christ. John’s wording does indeed start from the perspective that life was something that the Father already had without consideration in the text of the origin of that life. So it is self-existent. But Jesus’ status as a living entity has a beginning. Christ’s nonexistence—when he did not have life in himself—changes from the point that the Father gave him life and certainly continues from that point forward. Irons lists Heb 13:8, which says “Jesus is unchanging, ‘the same yesterday and today and forever,’” and argues that the statement implies eternity.
Certainly “forever” can extend unendingly into the future. But it is an absurd idea that just because a status begun at a point in time yesterday continues to every yesterday past. Finally along this line Irons cites Heb 1:11–12, pulled from the Septuagint reading of Ps 102:25–27, where the Lord’s created heaven and earth are contrasted with his continuity into future
