John 1:1 PROVES Jesus is God: MetaphysicsMike & Dan McClellan DEBUNKED

Yeah, it might be useful also to play some of Metaphysics Mike's stuff on this because he has a really, really weird interpretation of John 1. So, like, in one video, he kind of compares it to a statement "God is love," and he's like, "Oh, but 'God is love' doesn't make an identity statement between God and love. So, therefore, 'logos is God' doesn't make an identity statement between logos and God." The issue is, like, we hold the divine simplicity. So, yeah, when it says "God is love," that's going to be an identity statement.

"For sure. For sure. And that's how we resolve you the Phro's dilemma," verses 5 through 8, where it says, "end more fa theo huparon." Right, sorry, my Greek is absolutely horrible. People are going to make fun of me. Very bad.

"No, you're good, man. Me too. Don't worry."

"Where it says 'being,' where it says 'being in the form of God,' right? First off, harkon in of itself is a present, it's an active present participle. So, like, would you, would you agree that Jesus, prior to taking on the form of a servant or form of a servant, was subsisting in the form of God? Because huparkon actually means to subsist. Would you say that?"

"So, in reference to the Word of God, the Logos, absolutely. But that is not in reference to post-biblical Logos theorists like Justin Martyr. He's like, 'Your is Jesus, saint?' Right? Or 'Yes, he is.' But that's the Word incarnated. Okay. Prior to that, he's just the Word."

"This is already like a massive concession, as we'll see in a bit. Yeah, it's going to be a concession, but I, I don't want to get to that just yet because he, he wants to say that like the Logos and God are going to be identical in some sense, but they're not going to be like identical in every sense, right? So, continue the clip, and then I have one other clip to show where my..."

"God literal speech that that also entails his wisdom."

"In what, in what sense is Jesus identical to the Word? Because now I'm confused because if you say that Jesus is the Word, this creates a lot of different arguments that I could bring up. I got you."

"Okay. So, listen. When John is, is using the word Logos, that word can only be understood and interpreted in light of text in..."

"It's a little bit funny though, cuz he kind of like dodges the question, don't you think? Like, like Bryce asked a pretty simple question. What type of identity relation holds between Jesus and the Logos? And he's like, 'Yeah, so it's...' and then he just starts going over wisdom Christology. Like, that doesn't actually tell me anything. Like, unless you want to say that like Jesus just is identical to wisdom, but like, we agree with that, but that doesn't answer the question, right? Because the question is like, what type of identity relation is that?"

"He existed. Okay. So the, there's already a word in Logos tradition, in wisdom tradition, okay? In the Old Testament, Proverbs, Psalms, some places in Job, intertestamental Jewish literature, Phos in Hellenic Jewish literature. I get it. I get it."

"Okay. So, so then that is not a literal person."

"So how is Jesus identified as it then? Like, what, in what sense is he identified as it?"

"John 1:14, the Word becomes flesh. Word incarnates and becomes flesh. Okay. So that is..."

"Jesus, the one that became flesh. Is Jesus the one that became flesh?"

"No. So it's when the Word and flesh combine, then you get Jesus. Prior to that, it's just a reference to God's Word. Again, every example I just gave you, the Word..."

"Jesus' soul."

"So Jesus's soul is the Word. Uh, if you want to pause there, there's one thing. We're going to get into this briefly, but like, the thing Bryce is getting at is like, in the Arian Christology, this idea that like, you know, the soul of Christ is the Logos, and then like the flesh is like just going to be a body that's like animated by the Logos and that's it, right? So like when Metaphysics Mike says, 'Oh, Jesus is the flesh plus the Word,' you know, like, or like it's a body and the Word, but then like Jesus is not identical to the Logos. It kind of seems like Arian, right? So I think Mike is a little bit confused in in his like explanation of it, cuz like, is he an Arian or like, is he a Unitarian?"

"Okay. So then when you say that the, when you said that the spirit and the flesh come together, that makes what? Jesus."

"Yeah. That's, that's the, the..."

"Is his spirit the Word?"

"No."

"Okay. So then, is the body the Word?"

"No. Did, did you not hear me, dude?"

"So then how does, so then, so then how does, how does the body and the soul coming together somehow make the Jesus identified as the Word? You still haven't."

"Okay. So, so listen. Your, your question is ignoring what I just told you about wisdom and Logos tradition. There's already a tradition on this. Okay? That refers to God's..."

"Okay. I just told you it refers to God's Word. Okay? Your word is not a separate person than you. Neither is God's Word in the Old Testament."

"How is Jesus identified as it? That's what that's my whole question. How is he identified as it?"

"Just..."

"I just told you. In those traditions, the Word is closely associated with God's wisdom, with his character, his virtues, the divine attributes identical to his wisdom."

"Will you let me answer the question or you're? I'm sorry, you're pressed for time, but let, here, let him have another word after I respond, please. So listen, the point is that the Word having all those attributes in the Old Testament, in intertestamental literature, when we say the Word incarnated, we're saying Jesus has all those properties. That's it."

"Okay. So..."

"Yeah. Now, that's like a massive, massive concession because..."

"...as we're going to see later, the Logos, well, not just the Logos in John 1, but the actual intertestamental literature he's citing gives absolutely divine attributes to wisdom. Like, if we look at the Wisdom of Solomon, which is one of these very important texts for this wisdom tradition, Wisdom 7:22-30 assigns pre-existence before all things, assigns omnipotence, omniscience, speed beyond any speed, omnipresence to the wisdom. So if he thinks wisdom, wisdom's attributes are in Christ, he's effectively making him like this, either collapses to polytheism or the Trinity."

"Mhm. Yeah."

"Because he becomes a pre-existent, omnipotent, omniscient, divine being."

"Yeah. If you, um, if you play the next, and Bryce is going to point this out, if you play that part, and you're, you're going to see how Bryce uses it."

"Well, to just kind of like..."

"Yeah, please. You can have the last word. That's fine."

"Okay. So, just one quick question. I'm not going to respond to it. My, the thing I want to ask is, it's just a question."

"Okay. So, you said that it's the, you said it's properties, right? That it's like the properties of the Word."

"And that Jesus has these properties."

"That's what makes him the Word. Okay. So, Jesus has the properties of the Word, which is God. That's correct. Yeah. He has many properties and attributes of God. Absolutely."

"That's all."

"And now we can go to the, as you can see, right? The question Bryce is basically asking is like, you say Jesus is the Word. [snorts] What, what does that 'is' mean there? Like, does that 'is' like, cuz the 'is' is going to presumably refer to an identity relation, but like, what type of identity relation is it? And this is going to get into some stuff with relative identity, and we're going to see that in a bit. But if you go to the slides, I think we should first like go give an overview of John 1:1. Right? So like, to begin, right, as we says, right, Mike is kind of confused here in his like explanation because it seems kind of Arian, despite the fact that he wants to be like a Socinian, because like he says it's the Word plus the flesh equals Jesus. Does this mean that the Word is a proper part of Jesus? How does being a proper part ground identity statements though? Cuz like my arm isn't myself. It's a proper part of me. So I don't, I don't see how that can ground identity statements. He also like alludes to earlier wisdom traditions to explain what the Logos in John 1 is. And from what I can tell, right, he he kind of thinks that on the basis of prior precedent or prior context that the Logos must be like an impersonal entity, but then at the same time he wants to say that there's like a form of sameness between the Logos and Jesus. I, I don't really think like this is going to be a consistent model, and we're going to see why. However, like overall, like there's going to be two positions that Unitarians can take. You know, if you want to say the Word is God, either you can deny that the Word is a distinct person from the Father, which is what Mike does, or you can deny that the Word in John 1 is like a capital [snorts] G God, right? They'll say it's like a lower G god. Now, Mike takes the first, but then like other anti-Trinitarian polemicists like Dan Mullen are going to say the second. Now, we're going to..."

"...was divine."

"Yeah. So, we're going to refute both. And we're going to pay like special attention to what like Dan Mullen says in his book on what was it called? What the Bible says? So..."

"...the Bible says so. Yeah."

"Yeah. We have a response to Dan Mullen's stuff in that book. So, we decided to just incorporate that response into this slideshow. So, if we first want to give like an overview of John 1, we can first look at what Craig Keener says. Obviously, Craig Keener is going to be a very good scholar, very thorough. So, I'm going to put a lot of weight on what he says. Plus, he has some pretty good arguments for it. So, to begin, he says, 'In this line, John 1:1C, it becomes clear that although John employs the basic myth of wisdom as the nearest available analogy to communicate his Christology, it proves inadequate. Jesus is not created like wisdom, but is himself fully deity.' Bursting the traditional categories for the divine wisdom. Not all writers use the title Theos in the same way. It was the standard term for any deity in traditional Greek religion. But these deities acted in ways both repulsive to first-century Jews and embarrassing to many Greek and Roman thinkers."

"Now, to pause here though, and I mentioned this. I don't actually think wisdom is created in Sirach. I think Leo can get into that when we get to that point. Um, and I actually disagree that the wisdom is impersonal in Sirach or in Proverbs. But let's just say for sake of argument. But the thing is, right, according to Mike, wisdom is impersonal and created, or well, I'm not really sure if he thinks it's created. He might think it's created. A lot of the, well, specifically more modern non-Trinitarians like Jehovah's Witnesses tend to take that view. What I've seen Dale Tuggy say is it's just a personification, like Proverbs 8."

"Okay. Yeah. Cuz I know, I know Tuggy takes that view, in which it's going to be eternal, but it's not going to be like a separate person. So it's not going to really be created, but it's not going to be a separate person. But I, I think what Keener's interpretation is going to be in line with saying that about wisdom. But what he's going to point out is that even though John 1 uses that as an analogy, it's not sufficient to explain John's prologue. Because remember, Metaphysics Mike's argument, his argument here is just like the prior precedent would make it such that when John 1 uses the term Logos, it's going to be using it in like the same way, given the prior like way it's used. And so therefore, John, and so therefore when John 1 describes the Logos, it's also going to be impersonal. Right? So that's kind of what his argument is. But to respond to that, what Keener says is basically like, he concedes that, uh, in Proverbs, wisdom is impersonal. But we're not going to do that. We're going to get into that a bit. But then he says, some Jewish writers, especially those two, like when writers like Phileo call Moses a god. Moses remains a distinct from the supreme eternal God to be worshiped for whom the title is, uh, normally reserved. Further, Phileo has a text that allows him to accommodate some Hellenistic conception of heroes in an apologetically useful manner. Finally, for all the associations of Moses with the divine in Phileo, the language comes short of John's language for Jesus. Jesus appears as God's agent in the Fourth Gospel, but not just that, like Moses as God's chief agent, Jesus is one greater than Moses, namely the Word itself. In John's claim, John is there. In John's claim, Jesus is therefore not merely the ultimate prophet. God in the third line hardly signifies something dramatically different from what the term signified two lines preceding it. Even if one presses a distinction on the basis of the anarthrous construction, uh, remember that's going to be the difference between 'the God' and 'just God.' So John 1:1 is going to use 'and the Word was with the God' (hos), and then it's going to just have 'theos' like itself without any other article, right? But what Keener points out is that the actual article itself doesn't really matter, right? Because, so one of the things he's pointing out is like, hey, if you have Jesus as theos, he's either going to be the one God or he's going to be a different god. Well, since there's one God, he can only be the one God, right? So that's one thing he argues. Now, Mullen, what he argues is like, what his point is that no, actually there's multiple gods or something equivalent to that within the tradition of Judaism at this time. I think he has to equivocate, and I don't think it really makes sense with the context of John because if you look at the, and we covered this in like the Christology stream, although they admitted that other things could be predicated 'theos' in some sense, it was always in a lesser sense. And the Gospel of John directly denies that Jesus can be called a lesser theos, right? Because, and this is what Drew covers in our video on John 10, the context of like John 10 when he quotes Psalm 82 is he's making like a so much greater than argument, right? And in Psalm 82, that's where you see the term theos or Elohim you being used in its lesser sense. And what Jesus is saying is that he's going to be greater than those other individuals, meaning that he's not theos in just the lesser sense. He's greater than that. And so I would recommend checking out that video. So Dan Mullen's point, although he's technically right that theos was applied to other individuals, he has to equivocate on it, right? Because the sense in which Jesus is theos is going to be a unique sense according to John 10."

"Also, it's worth noting that in the context of Johannine Christology, or Johannine theology in general, John 17:3 shows in the author of John of John's Gospel's mind..."

"Monotheism."

"Yeah. Yeah. Monotheism, the only true God. And the scholars specifically comment that this is not meaning that he's like the true God as in like he's an archetypal God from whom lesser gods are based on, because people typically make this equivocation, like Jehovah's Witnesses to say, 'Oh, he's a true God, and then there are lesser gods.' Same way Christ is a true bread, but there's still lesser bread. No, this is in comparison to the quote lesser gods, to the quote gods, meaning the demons of the pagan tribes, as we can see in especially in in the Septuagint and the Greek translations, there is a strong tradition that these pagan deities might exist, but they are not truly deities, they are actually demons. So, yeah, I mean, um, this polytheism Mullen sneaks in just doesn't work under Johannine theology."

"One other thing, right? Keener seems to think that wisdom is impersonal and created in like Sirach, right? But we're just going to deny that, and we're going to see why. As for like the creating, actually the wisdom traditions kind of have this weird idea where it says wisdom is created, but then also eternal. And that's going to like be kind of strange because if something is created, then it can't be eternal. So what I think is like being described is that they're using like improper terms to say that wisdom is begotten, right? Because they're, their idea is like, hey, somehow wisdom is sourced in God, but then also is eternal with God, and that's kind of like, that's just going to be the beginning, right? So they want to say created but eternal, and that's going to be their way of describing the beginning in improper or like, I guess you could say, analogical terms, right? So it's only going to be analogical. Yeah."

"That, that only goes specifically for the book of Sirach. Proverbs 8, actually. So this is butchered by people like Jehovah's Witnesses. But the actual word they use there isn't 'create,' but rather 'begotten' or 'possessed.' So what it could possibly mean is either wisdom was begotten before all things, meaning eternal generation, or he already had it with him prior to creation."

"Yeah. Cuz my point was more so like that even if we like concede that it says the term 'created,' that's just going to be using, as I said, like analogical language, cuz remember they weren't like, cuz they weren't, I guess you could say, philosophically precise in their language. And so we have to understand that that they're not going to be using language in the same way as us. As I explained before, Mike wants to explain John 1 by appealing to the prior literary context. The issue is that even if wisdom was impersonal, which we're not going to grant, that doesn't carry over to John 1. At most, that only carries over in terms of prior probability, but if texts are to be interpreted in light of prior statements, they aren't rigidly constrained to those prior texts, right? So like, for example, if like some prior probability dictates that I don't know, like I'm Christian, therefore I hold to divine simplicity, but then there's like an explicit statement by me saying that I deny it. You know, that probability isn't really going to be like strong enough to like alter the posterior probability such that like the probability that I hold to divine simplicity is higher than it is that I do not, right? So like, for example, if you want like an actual example of this, take someone like Ryan Mullins, right? Like if I just said, 'Ryan Mullins is Christian,' you would think that, okay, well, since most Christians hold to some form of divine simplicity, then therefore Ryan Mullins holds to it as well, based off of prior probability. But obviously, if we then see like a statement from Ryan Mullins saying that he denies it, that would obviously be enough to reject the claim that he accepts divine simplicity, right? And I think this is going to be similar to John 1 because we shouldn't assume that John and other Second Temple literature are going to be using like wisdom in like the same way just because they're in the same cultural context. That can influence the prior probability, right? And that shows that they're going to be using similar terms and having a similar analysis of said terms, but that's only going to be a prior probability thing on. And so if we just show that like the Logos in John 1 is directly stated to be a person, that's going to be enough to like make the posterior probability high. And we're going to get into why the Logos is a person in a bit. But we can also question like, what is Mike's justification for taking wisdom as impersonal, right? So he's going to say in Proverbs, you know, wisdom is impersonal. Why? Like, what's going to be the argument for that? Cuz he's one, like the argument that he wants to give is going to be something like this: Wisdom is an attribute. Attributes aren't persons because they're abstract. So therefore, wisdom isn't going to be a person. The issue is is that he's going to be equivocating on how he's, you know, defining wisdom, right? Because you can say wisdom as in like God's mind or like God's knowledge. But if God is simple and his mind is identical to God, then obviously God is going to be identical to his wisdom. In which case you can say that wisdom is personal, right? And what that's going to mean is that the argument, 'wisdom is an attribute, so therefore God can't be wisdom, and so therefore wisdom has to be like impersonal and so the personal pronouns are just metaphorical' is going to fail because like wisdom just is identical to God. God's mind is God, right? So if you take a divine simplicity view, which, you know, Mike might want to say that, hey, that's going to be importing philosophy into the text, but we're going to get into why that's not the case, right? With just from textual arguments because you can use Irenaeus to show that's not true. But regardless, right, if Mike wants to say that wisdom is like an abstract entity, then like isn't he also importing like outside philosophy into the text to argue that? Because like obviously abstract objects aren't going to be like stated to exist in scripture, right? That's an inference he's making. And so if he wants that, right, if he wants to make a real distinction between God's essence and his attributes, that's also going to be a philosophical thing that he's importing into the text. And so he's going to have to justify that."

"Now, we're mentioning that too because before he..."

"...like part of his, well-poisoning against the Hypostatic Union is, 'Oh, this relies on external philosophy and stuff like that.'"

"Yeah. But..."

"...as external said,..."

"...he's he's importing external philosophy."

"Yeah. Because like, where is he getting this idea that wisdom is an abstract entity that's being personified, but in reality is just like an abstract attribute of God that's really distinct from God, right? Because abstract objects, real distinctions, and so, well, maybe you can argue that real distinctions are found in the Bible, not like by name, of course, but maybe by the concept. But abstract objects aren't going to be stated to exist, right? It's like that's going to be something that you're going to say, I think, like in order to use abstract objects to interpret the Bible. What you're doing is going to be very similar to what the person who defends the Hypostatic Union is doing. You're saying, 'Hey, I think abstract objects are a good explanation for ordinary facts that we know to be true intuitively.' So whenever we interpret those facts, it's fine to use abstract objects as our interpretation. But then we can say the same thing for the Hypostatic Union because we can say the Hypostatic Union, even if it's using philosophical concepts, is the best explanation for the biblical data, and thus it's fine for me to use that to interpret the biblical data, right? So finally, right, the early Christians actually did interpret the wisdom to be personal because wisdom is the person Jesus. And we actually covered this earlier with how the Gospels support a form of, I guess you could say, wisdom Christology in which Jesus just is the mind of God. So what's interesting here is, as I said before, divine simplicity is going to be relevant to the context of John, even if we're making a textual argument. So this is what Irenaeus says, as quoted by Thomas P. Szeski, right? He says, 'But if heretics had known the scriptures and had been taught the truth, they would have known beyond doubt that God is not as men are, and his thoughts are not what like men's thoughts are. And for the Father of all is a vast distance from those affections and passions which operate among men. He is simple, uncompounded being, without diverse members, and altogether like and equal to himself, since he has holy understanding, holy spirit, and holy thought and holy intelligence.' Right? So notice how Irenaeus is supporting a very strong form of divine simplicity. In fact, he says he is holy reason, and he is holy hearing, and he is holy seeing, and he is holy light, and he is the whole source of all that is good. Even as quote, 'even as the religious and pious are want to speak concerning God.' Notice how Irenaeus supports divine simplicity here. And in fact, he brings up the point about wisdom when he says 'holy intelligence, holy understanding, and holy thought.' Right? So he's saying God is identical to his mind. So if Logos, if the Logos or wisdom in Proverbs is like the idea that us interpreting John 1 in light of divine simplicity is like anachronistic, that's not going to hold because of the fact that, as I've said, like I've argued this before, but Irenaeus is going to be in some way like a descendant of the Johannine community. So Irenaeus is going to be directly relevant to our interpretation of Johannine literature. And since Irenaeus supports this view that wisdom is going to be identical to God, it would follow that we can use that to like interpret John 1. Now, this is going to get further into it, right? So what I'm citing here is going to be a dissertation by, I believe it is S.I.U., I forgot the like full name, right? But he wrote a master's thesis, I should say, in 2008, where he just went over the meaning of the term Logos in John 1. And he gives a pretty in-depth overview, and he does like a survey of how different people used it, right? And what he concludes is that collectively, people use the term Logos to refer to the true one creator, right? And then he says that John, given this context, is using the term Logos to say that Jesus is the true one creator. So basically, even if we wanted to use the prior context point, that would actually support us because of the way that Logos is used, because it's it's used to refer to the one, if you will, right? So that's like kind of like how the ancient Greeks would have thought of it. But then also you can look at a Hebraic origin where you have the term Memra of the Lord in the Old Testament, right? Or something similar to that. It's like in the Targums, it's the Memra of the Lord, but then in the Old Testament, you also have the Word of God that appears. And so what you can say is that in a way, the author of the Fourth Gospel was kind of using, he was using the Old Testament idea where the Word of the Lord is this personal thing, right? The Word of the Lord is a person in the Old Testament. The wisdom of God is going to be a person in the Old Testament. And what John is doing is he's taking these ideas in Greek philosophy and he's saying, he's like correcting them, right? So he's using both the usage of Logos in Greek philosophy and in the Old Testament, and he's saying that the Old Testament corrects the Greek philosophy. However, he's still not saying that the Greeks were entirely wrong, because in a way, right, the Logos can be used to describe the creator, even or like the one, even in some Greek views, and John is going to say, 'Yeah, that, that's true. The Logos does describe the creator. It's just that this refers to Jesus, right?' Or like someone might say, like the Logos is reason. Now, John might agree with that, but he's just going to say reason is personal. So, this is another thing Yun brings up. He actually looks at just the meaning of the, like the preposition used, and what he's going to conclude is the preposition requires some form of a real distinction between the subjects, right? So if there's a real distinction between the Logos and God, then that's going to be an issue because what Metaphysics Mike wants to say is that Logos is just another term to describe God's wisdom, right? But how does that work with saying that there's a real distinction between the Logos and God? Right? Now for us, what we're going to say is that there's a relative distinction between the Logos considered relatively as the Son and the Logos considered relatively as the Father, if you want to say that, right? So God's mind considered as paternity is going to be distinct from God's mind considered relatively as filiation. So we have a model that can account for that and that can interpret that. But how does Metaphysics Mike interpret that? Like, because remember, we do not want to sacrifice divine simplicity here because of the context given the Johannine community stuff that I mentioned earlier. And so this is going to be relevant, right? Because the only way I can see Mike get out of this without introducing relative distinctions into God. Remember, if if he wants to introduce relative distinctions into God, then he's going to have to concede some form of Trinitarianism, right? So the only way for Mike to get around this would be to actually introduce like an absolute distinction. But the issue is that's going to sacrifice divine simplicity because then he's going to be distinguishing between God's attributes considered absolutely. And furthermore, real distinctions in God are only going to be relative, not absolute. Absolute distinctions would entail composition. So the subjects referred to Logos and God must be distinguished by relation. God's wisdom and and God considered absolutely are not distinguished by relation as they are not really distinct at all. Under a Trinitarian model, however, the Logos refers to the Son, and thus can have the relation of sonship toward the Father, and thus is really distinct from the Father. In other words, our model of Trinitarian theology can make sense of how John 1 explicates both unity between God and the Logos, and yet distinction between God and the Logos. Because the unity is going to be in terms of absolute being, the distinction is going to be relative. Now, furthermore, this is once again from Yun's thesis. He says the Logos is given like the term creator. And obviously, like how can a creator be impersonal? I don't really see how that makes sense. How can the creator of the world be impersonal? Obviously, if we're going to be theists, then the creator of the world is going to be personal. Like that's the thing, the thing that distinguishes theism from like, let's say, some form of deism or something like that is that the, or I guess under theism, the creator can be personal. So maybe like under a form of like Neoplatonism or something like that, the thing which distinguishes us from them is that we say the creator is personal. If the Logos is the creator, and John is going to be a theist, then obviously, you know, John is going to think that the Logos is personal. And also this would attribute deity to the Word because obviously God is going to be the creator. So if the Logos is the creator, and if there are not two creators, then the Logos and God must be the same creator. The prologue is basically like the base that's used for exegesis. Actually, Yun says something similar because he gives like a chart that sort of compares the descriptions of the Logos and the descriptions of Jesus. So, it seems that like the prologue is kind of like the base from which you're supposed to interpret the, um, concepts, right? And then he's going to this source that he's citing also seems to agree with Yun because the Logos as described in John is going to be a little bit different from how the Platonic and Stoic views work because he's more than a mediator because he is not just like some impersonal entity. He is God dwelling on earth. So one other thing, right, is that this type of language just cannot be used for creatures, right? And, uh, this is something that we're going to get into. There's actually a term for lesser deity which John could have used, which he did not use, which would imply that, you know, he actually does agree with the deity of the Son."

"Yeah. Um, I, I think we can cover that in in my slide in more detail."

"Yeah. Yeah. So this is going to be when we talk about the person of of the Logos. First of all, the Logos is consistently referred to as a 'he.' And this is going to apply even in portions where personification doesn't really make sense. It's like when John the Baptist refers to Jesus, the text still refers to Jesus as a 'he.' So it says, 'Now the Word became flesh and took up residence among us. We saw his glory, the glory of the one and only, full of grace and truth, who came from the Father.' John testified about him and shouted out, 'This was the one about whom I said, "He who comes after me is greater than I am, because he existed before me." For we have all received from his fullness one gracious gift after another. For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. The only one himself, God, who is in closest fellowship with the Father, has made God known.' Notice how like he, so what Metaphysics Mike wants to argue is that like John 1 is similar to like Proverbs, right? So that's why he's going to be justified in taking an impersonal interpretation of John 1. We've already refuted that because wisdom isn't impersonal. But second of all, when John the Baptist says it, that's just going to be a quote that he said, and yet he is still referring to the same subject. So John the Baptist is referring to the Logos in the same subject. Like, unless you want to say that when John uses the word 'he,' he just like equivocates on the meaning one sentence later. But like, you need to give a justification for that. Like what? Like under his interpretation, it seems like John the Baptist would either have to be using personification as well, which I think is absurd. Why would we expect that of John the Baptist when he's saying something to someone else in like an ordinary context? Or it's going to have to say that the term 'he' is somehow like, they're going to have to say that the term 'he' switches from like personification or like metaphorical usage to like a literal usage. But what's the justification for saying that the switch happened, right? It seems kind of arbitrary in a way."

"Yeah. It seems like they're reading their, um, presuppositions into the text."

"Yeah. Also, other Johannine literature identifies the Logos as a person. 1 John 1:1-4, Revelation 19:13, and I think Revelation is authored by John for reference. Same with First John. Also, members of the Johannine tradition or school state that the Logos is personal. Irenaeus is one of them. So he says, 'For when John proclaiming one God, the Almighty, and one Jesus Christ, the only begotten.' Interestingly, that would, um, actually go against like the polytheism reading of the text which like someone like Mullen might advance. He, and then to, but to continue on with the quote, he says, 'the only begotten, by whom all things were made.' So notice how he's using personal language again, declares that this was the Son of God. So hold on, he's making an identity statement between the Son of God and the Logos. Then he says, 'this the only begotten, this the former of all things, this the true light who enlightens every man, this the creator of the world, this he that came down to his own, that he that became flesh and dwelt among us. For summing up his, that is the Apostle John's statements respecting to us the Word previously mentioned by him, he furthers declare, and the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.' But according to their hypothesis, right? So he's mentioning someone else there, like a heretic, for example, he says, 'the Word did not become flesh at all, inasmuch as he never went outside of the pl-' I'm probably going to butcher the pronunciation, but uh, Leo..."

"Yeah, it's, it's some weird Gnostic concept. He deals with a lot of like, really out there Gnostic stuff in Inspiration."

"Yeah, I'm, I'm not that good at like pronouncing that stuff. But 'that Savior became flesh who was formed by a special dispensation and was of later date than the Word. Learn you that, learn then you foolish men, that Jesus who suffered for us and who dwelt among us, and himself the Word of God.' So first, Irenaeus is using personal language again, right? And I don't think personification is going to work here. Like, there's no reason to say that there's personification in Irenaeus. Then he says that the Logos is the Son of God. Then he actually critiques people for saying that the Logos didn't become flesh and that Jesus was, um, at some point after the Logos, right? And that's interesting because under Mike's model, Jesus is created after the Logos, right? Because Jesus exists at some point after God in time. And so Jesus is going to be created posterior to the Logos, which is like an issue because Irenaeus directly denies that. And then finally, he like straight up just applies the motifs he was applying to the Logos to Jesus. He says, 'Jesus who suffered for us, who dwelt among us, and himself is the Word of God.' So one other thing, right? So we can also just directly attack their interpretation that the Logos is impersonal. To begin, this is from William L. Craig. I know he's not really a biblical scholar, and I obviously don't agree with his philosophy or like Trinitarian view at all. However, I think he does make a good point here. So, I think it is useful to quote. He says, 'The more important point is that by interpreting the Logos to be a personification of a divine attribute, Tuggy concedes the full deity of Christ.' Remember, uh, Tuggy and Metaphysics Mike are going to have basically the same Christology. But to continue with the quote, 'denying instead his distinct personhood in his pre-incarnate state, the fatal flaw in his idiosyncratic interpretation is that a literary personification cannot become flesh and live among us as a real person, which John 1:14 says. John 1:18, which Tuggy does not discuss, reveals that prior to the incarnation, the Son was distinct and a fully divine person with the Father. Similarly, the talk of the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed and of the glory which you have given to me because you loved me before the foundation of the world makes little sense with respect to literary personification.' Then this is from a pretty underused dissertation by Johnson, which is about the immutability, which is about how Christians view the immutability of God with respect to the incarnation. So what Johnson writes is, 'The Logos of the Johannine prologue is to be distinguished from Phileo's discussion of the Logos and from the Jewish tradition of the pre-existent Word precisely because in John, the subject is not a personification but the divine person.' Now, for context, right, we obviously deny that the subject in the Proverbs tradition, so in the wisdom literature, is a is a personified impersonal entity. Remember, right, Johnson does think that like wisdom in Proverbs is impersonal, but we're going to disagree with him because of the things we said, right? But I, I don't want to rehash what we just said earlier. Regardless, to return to the quote, what he points out is that John 1 says, 'He became flesh and tented among us.' And what he points out is that this is actually similar to how Yahweh dwelt in the camp in the wilderness, right? So he's using personal language for the Logos. Then he says, 'From the introductory statements of his Gospels, then John presents Jesus Christ, the Word, as a divine person whose existence transcends time and yet as one who was manifest in the course of human history.' Obviously, right? I disagree with both of their presuppositions. Craig, with Craig, I don't like how he models his view of the Trinity. With Johnson, I disagree with him when he says that the Logos in wisdom literature, or wisdom in wisdom literature, is impersonal. I think it is personal. All right. So, now we can get into sort of point. Yeah. But to explain, right? So as said before, Mullen thinks that like Jesus is divine, but then Yahweh doesn't exhaust the category of divine, right? So he, he wants to say that. Now, obviously, I already brought up the point about how John directly refutes this because like he says that Jesus is not a lesser theos or lesser Elohim, but instead is greater than that. But we're, we're going to go through like a, a survey of scholars and see, you know, because remember Dan likes to bring up consensus a lot, so I think that's going to be important."

"Yeah. Do that."

"The way the way Mullen makes the way Mullen talks about this is he makes it seem as if every single scholar takes his view, and you're basically like some fundamentalist coping if you take the traditional readings. However, he always just forgets, like, funny enough, he forgets to mention that this is like a very, very minority reading of, um, John 1:1 and John 1:18 too."

"So, we can go to the next..."

"...minority reading, right? Cuz..."

"Oh."

"Yeah. Yeah. So, um, before, just to give a summary, right? John 1:1C, meaning the third clause within that verse, says, 'And the Word was Theos.' Now, there are different things that could mean, and as we can see, Bill Mounce here interprets it as qualitative, same as Mullen. Now, this is not really a, not really a problem for the Trinitarian view because in the Trinitarian view, that, that's true, all three persons are are divine. However, based on the, the grammatical construction of that verse, it seems as though he was Theos by nature from eternity. Now, we can go to the next slide."

"Yeah. So the way Schnackenberg interprets this is also a traditional reading, and he's one of the foremost Johannine scholars from the from the last century, and still very much authoritative within academia. So, well, just to quote him specifically, he says, 'But this Word is more than the utterance of God at the dawn of creation. It is a personal Word which became flesh at a given time in history. Jesus Christ, whose existence is here traced back to before the world, to divi- to.' Yeah. 'Jesus Christ, whose existence is here traced back to before the world, to the divine eternity.' And then basically, as for the grammatical reading, he understands that the Theos before 'meaning the the the person he is with' (hos), meaning 'the God,' is obviously a person of the Father. However, Theos, the Theos there, qualitatively applied to the Logos, is not applying some abstract divinity. It's applying exhaustive divinity proper to Yahweh alone, and it denotes absolute power. So if we can go to the next slide."

"The Reverend Dr. Raymond D. Brown has a really good, um, reading and understanding of this. He's one of the most important Johannine scholars, again, like probably the most important Johannine scholar of the last, like, hundred years. And he takes a traditional reading, and like he notes the, there is predicative, but you can't just translate it as 'and the Word was divine' because that's too weak. It's, there's already a word for divine, yet the author deliberately chose not to use it. So he's not talking about some like vague divinity. He's using the word for maximal divinity. And then like other trans, like he knows other translations say it's also appropriate to translate it as 'what God was, a Word was given.' Again, like other stuff within the context of of John, Johannine literature, this really does seem like it's based on his grammatical construction, saying more than just vague divinity."

"Now, if we can go to the next slide again."

"Now, for John 1:18, this is actually a bit of a contested topic because there are some text critical issues with this verse. But like, the, the more traditional reading is, 'the only begotten Son, who is ever at the Father's side, who has revealed him.' However, our best and most recent manuscripts actually read, 'No one has ever seen God. It is God, the only Son.' So basically, this verse is calling Jesus, is calling Christ, God, the only Son, and using God as an identity there. Now, there are some other translations, but both identify, identify this as like a very maximalist statement, Christologically speaking."

"Now, if we can go to, um, the next verse."

"So I think Harder's analysis is the best one just to fully understand the topic. And basically, there are four different ways to say whatever he could possibly be saying here. So with the first one, you would have 'the Logos was the God,' or, um, 'hodos en hoos,' which would mean, uh, well, yeah, so the first one would mean 'the Logos was the God.' The second one would mean 'the Logos was God.' The third one would mean..."

Logos was God. The fourth one would actually be the way Jehovah's Witnesses read it, which is "Logos was a god," meaning like a little 'g' god or, um, some other, some other one. And then the last one is what I mentioned before, the word *theos*, which is actually the adjective meaning, um, qualitatively divine. Right?

Now, if we can go to the next slide, clause [snorts] 'a' would just collapse into modalism. If you have "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God (*ho theos*) and the Word was the God (*ho theos*)," you'd have them, you would have it equate the God (*ho theos*) with with with himself, so it would collapse to modalism and it wouldn't really make sense because how can you be towards yourself? Makes much sense.

Now, clause 'd', like I mentioned before, is a Jehovah's Witness reading, but that's not what it actually says. That's a different grammatical construction and it's very unlikely based on just the normal means of reading Greek. Then clause 'e' and 'd' would be very similar and they only differ very slightly.

It's important to note too, I forgot to mention that there is only one critical commentary which takes Dan's reading, and it's *Hermana*. It's about as old as the other commentaries we're using. So it was written in 1987, and that's Dan's only source. It makes it his only argument there.

Now, if John was really trying to communicate a lesser divinity, he could have used 'e' or 'd', but he chose not to. And that's very much important. So, as he notes, as John has spoken in terms of relationship and differentiation between *ho logos* and *ho theos*, he would imply in 'b' or 'c' that they share the same nature as belonging, belonging to reality.

*Theos* clauses 'b' and 'c' are identical in meaning but differ slightly in emphasis. 'C' would mean that the Logos, rather than something else, had the nature of *theos*, while 'b' means that the Logos had the nature of *theos* rather than something else. In this clause, the form John actually uses the word *theos* is placed at the beginning for emphasis. So this is actually pretty important too, because if he has a nature of *theos* instead of something else, he doesn't have the nature of being a created being like, like Mullen implies, or being like this lesser divine name-bearer. He has a nature of *theos* as opposed to some other nature. He could have.

"As John has just spoken in terms of relationship and differentiation between *ho logos* and *ho theos*, he would imply 'b' and 'c' or 'b' or 'c', but they share the same nature as belonging to the reality *theos*. Clauses 'b' and 'c' are identical in meaning but differ only slightly in emphasis. 'C' would mean that the Logos, rather than something else, had the nature of *theos*. 'B' means that the Logos has the nature of *theos* rather than something else. In this clause, the form that John actually has the word *theos* is placed at the beginning for emphasis."

Yeah. So that, that's basically what I was saying earlier, and that, um, the point of the grammar John chose is his quality is *theos* as opposed to having a different quality. So his only quality at the time is the quality *theos*.

"He doesn't have."

Is identical to, um, his essence. So there's not a multiplicity of attributes in God. Yeah. In a way, more importantly, more importantly, I think this kind of rules out name-bearing too, because it wouldn't, he wouldn't just have the quality of *theos* if he was merely like this name-bearer creature.

"Says."

He would, he would have additional qualities there, but.

"Also, we've already refuted name-bearing elsewhere because it, it collapses into Trinitarianism because in order to have the divine name, you have to have the divine essence based off of how names worked in the ancient East. Uh, but just watch our video on the Angel of the Lord if you want to get a like an explanation on that. Regardless, right, whatever *theos* is, the Logos is exactly that. There's no implication that the Logos could be like a lesser nature or substance than *theos*, right? That's kind of the point."

Well, in fact, it implies the opposite. Whatever, whatever *ho theos* is, his qualities are, the Logos shares the exact same qualities, um, deliberately and not less. Like this rules it out completely, basically. Like he, it, this rules out lesser divinities completely.

"And I think if we."

Yeah. Next slide.

"So Bruce VA, just to read this out, Bruce VA explains the meaning of the clause succinctly and lucidly: 'The Word is divine, but He is not all of divinity, for He has already been distinguished from another divine Person.' But in terms of, for our analysis, it is important that we understand the phrase, 'and the Word was divine,' is an attempt to represent the meaning of clause 'b' rather than 'd' or 'e'. Undoubtedly, VA means that the Word is divine in the same sense that *ho theos* is divine. But the English language is not as versatile at this point as Greek, and we can avoid understanding the English phrase only if we are aware of the particular force of the Greek expression that it represents."

So again, like I was saying before, this is like giving him this maximal attribute. This is a very strong word he's using here. Now, in interpreting clauses of this type, it is important to recall that Greek writers also had other types of word order available. If a writer simply wished to represent the subject as one of a class, he could use an anarthrous predicate noun after the verb. If he wished to emphasize that the predicate noun was definite, he could supply the article. The availability of these other types of word order strengthens the view that in many instances, we may look primarily for a qualitative emphasis in an anarthrous predicate nouns that precede the verb.

Okay. Yeah, that's what I was kind of getting at, um, with, with respect to word ordering. But yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. Um, if we can go to the next slide.

Next slide. Yeah.

Yeah. So now this is the kill shot to both Hermana and Mullen's readings. So basically what they appeal to to take this qual, well, to use a qualitative reading as like a subordinated, vague divinity, is they appeal to church father, well, not church father, early church writer, Origin of Alexandria, who was effectively a Greek grammarian. He's a fantastic resource for this because he knew the ins and outs of Greek grammar. He has extended commentaries where he's just talking about what the Greek means.

Yeah.

And he doesn't. And now.

One other thing before we move on to Origin, I should also say, uh, they also use Pho, right? Because they say that Pho has the idea of like Logos being like chaos, right? But not *ho theos*, right? Since the Logos like isn't, they want to say that the Logos isn't like God in like an absolute sense, right? I mean, they're not like the same substance. But Kenir, if you go to the first slide that we actually went over, or, yeah, one of the first slides, we quoted Kenir, and, um, Kenir actually goes over this and he says that no, well, the way Pho uses the term Logos and *Theos* and how he applies them isn't the same way that John is using them. So there's no reason to suggest like a, I guess you could say, a univocity between John and Pho. They also, like, one of the arguments to make is kind of like, like they use the divine translation, basically, right? And they, they use Origin, as we said, right?

But what's important is Origin doesn't actually read what they read it the way they say. So what they say is, "In a similar fashion, Origin interprets the evangelist. The evangelist does not say the Logos is God, but only that the Logos is divine." In fact, for the author of the hymn, as for the evangelist, only the Father was *theos*. The Son was subordinate to Him. That's not what he says. So if we actually read it, read what what he says, he says, "Or they deny that the, the divinity of the Son and make his individual nature and essence as an individual to be different than the Father." So he explicitly affirms that the individual nature or essence of the Son is the same as that of the Father based on this, based on this verse. And then he says, "Their problem can be resolved in this way. We must say to them that at one time, God with article is very God, meaning true God. Therefore, also the Savior in his prayer to the Father, 'that we may know You, the only true God.'" And then on, on the other hand, "everything besides the very God, which is made God by participation in His divinity, would be would more properly not be said to be the God, but god."

Oh, if you can go to the next slide.

Also, one more thing. Uh, Bunner, um, if that's how you pronounce his name, he actually denies that like Pho's Logos is close to like the Johannine one.

Yeah. Yeah. There's.

Yeah, we cited him earlier, remember?

Yeah. There's a lot of stuff showing that. Um, well, at the very least, John doesn't depend on it. They might have like a common origin in terms of Jewish tradition, but it's not dependent. So just to continue with Origin here, his understanding is that because the Logos is God, you can call him God the Word. So he says, "Because of this, we must set forth this explanation in addition to the difference which has already been explained in relation to which we declared that the, that God the Word is a minister of deity to all the others." So he calls him God the Word based on this. And I think what Origin understands is this is merely the identity and predication distinction. It adds nothing new to the discussion. Origin here just says what we've all been thinking, which would be like, as an example, you could say, just to like change the grammar around with, um, something else. You could say, "In the house was Jake, and Jake was with the man, and Jake was man." So this is basically what John 1 is saying, except if you replace "in the beginning" with "house," "Jake" or "Logos" with "Jake," and "*ho theos*" with "the man." So basically, in this sentence, Jake would be man by predication, meaning he possesses human nature, but he's not the man he, he's with. So Origin is very specific. The Logos is God, the same way God is God, except for being the source of divinity. The Logos is a mediator of divinity in his Christology, and he does not interpret the statement as implying any subordinate form of divinity like Mullen and Hermana.

Now, if we can go to the next slide. St. Irenaeus of Lyons is actually a very important witness to this because, again, Roy said earlier, he's part of a Johannine community. So he's actually like a straight-up historical witness to the meaning of this. But on top of that, he's a great native Greek speaker, and he interprets it the traditional way. So in *Against Heresies*, Book Four, he says, "For that was the beginning, and the Logos was God, just so since what is born of God is God." So he doesn't think there's any difference in any subordination implied by it. He says, "Oh, what is born of God is God." Then he says, "Oh, for the Greek it says, 'For so too was the beginning, and the Word was God,' consistently, for what is begotten but from God is God." Just to like look at a retranslation I had, and like scholars note, is not a subordinationist at all. Like Jackson Lashier, who's a leading Irenaeus scholar, notes, "Notably, the logic of the mediation of the Logos in creation does not force Irenaeus to posit a diminished divinity of the Logos in relation to God. In fact, given Irenaeus's understanding of God, his participation in creation suggests the Logos's full and equal divinity with God." So he reads this the most like the strongest possible way you could read it, and he's a native Greek speaker. I think just purely on like an epistemic basis, I think we can trust Irenaeus more than Mullen in the 21st century or Hermana in 1987. People have been consistently reading this the same way for a reason. This is just what it means, and there is no implication of subordinationism.

And then finally, just to add something about the nuance of the way Mullen will translate it. More recently, he translates it as, "And the Word was divine," which obviously we already debunked. But another way he translated it before was, "And the Word was deity." So the problem with such a translation is you can't use a different word for for the God and whatever quality you're assigning to the Logos because that's a nuance that's not present in the Greek and it introduces a distinction which is again not present in the Greek. This leads to a softening of what it's saying, which is completely improper to, which is complet, which is completely improper and disloyal to the Greek construction. There is no distinction between the word they use for *ho* and a quality. So like I said in my other slide, it would be like saying, um, "Jake was with the man, and Jake was man." It's the same word for a reason.

So, one other thing I should point out is that one of the biggest reasons why people take a, like, view that this is a lesser deity being described in John 1 is they're going to say, "Actually, the term *theos* has an article in front of it, right? Meaning that it's divine in a weaker sense." And so, Kenir directly combats this by saying, "Many commentators doubt that the construction construction signifies anything theological at all. It certainly cannot connote a god as in one of many, given Jesus's unique titles, role, and relationship with the Father and later in the gospel. Nor should it mean divine in the weaker sense, distinct from God's own divine nature. For example, in the sense which in which Pho can apply it to Moses, right?" That's what Hermana cites when they, uh, want to do this. They want to distinguish between *theos* and *ho theos* because of the way that Pho uses. But that's not applicable here, according to Kenir. And he gives his arguments for it. He also gives arguments for it throughout the commentary where he goes through Johannine Christology. He also says, "Had John merely meant divine in a more general sense, the more common but more ambiguous expression." Well, I can't read Greek, so, um, I'm going to butcher the pronunciation of that, but he, he, there's basically a term.

It's all good. It's all made up in the end anyway. But yeah, so basically, there's already an expression which was already available to describe what's it called, like a lesser deity. If you, so if John wanted to describe that, he could have easily done it with that, right? And so because of this, the construction without, like, the article can't really be used to connote, like, a weaker sense of the word divine in, like, distinction from, like, how the Father is portrayed as deity. In fact, there's actually, like, a study of the usage of the term god in, like, the New Testament, and there was a significant amount, I should say, which did not include the article, which would imply that, you know, the article probably doesn't even mean anything here, or like the lack of article doesn't really mean anything in terms of, like, how we're supposed to interpret our Christology besides just saying that Jesus is distinct from the Father, right? On top of that, John omits the article from when he, when he talks about, like, God, like elsewhere in the gospel, specifically when he's talking about, like, the Father, right? It's even in a Petristic text or just in Greek literature in general, right? Plus, Kenir actually argues that, uh, in 20:28 where Thomas says, "My Lord and my God," he says that this is actually using *ho theos* and applying it to Jesus. And then the Beasley-Murray commentary, now this one's a little bit old, he also points out the same thing that there's actually a very similar term that kind of corresponds to what someone like Mullen would want to argue, where he wants to say that like the Word is a lesser divinity, if you will, but there's already a term for that, and yet John doesn't use that term. So like, like overall, right, it's, we can agree that it's a statement of predication, but the type of predication that Mullen or Hermana wants just is not proper to the text, right? Because as we've covered, the text would be saying that Jesus is going to be divine in the same sense the Father is divine. And also, like, as I've pointed out earlier, the text is saying that the Logos is personal and is a distinct person from the Father. So you're going to have to concede binitarianism based off of the Johannine prologue.

Okay. So next, we can go to how this relates to metaphysics. Mike. Right. So, we've already debunked Mike's interpretation that like this is an impersonal entity that just like is wisdom personified, kind of, right? Because like wisdom is not impersonal. But also, like the way that Mike was using this, he was trying to connect it to Philippians 2 and trying to like explain how exactly like Jesus could be pre-existent in Philippians 2. The issue is, one of the arguments that metaphysics Mike makes is like, "More *morphe* doesn't imply ontological essence." But it's a little bit like, that's kind of a confusing phrase because the term "ontological" in that, in like the construction "ontological essence," supposedly the term "ontological" is going to be modifying essence. But how does "ontological" modify the meaning of essence? Right? Like, like, is there such a thing as like a non-ontological essence? If there's not, then like, what's the difference between ontological essence and just regular essence, right? And the reason why I bring this up is that when like Bryce brings up a very like simple term such as type or token, Mike basically says, "Oh, well, you're just bringing up technical terms to like, confuse the discussion, right?" He's saying that, "Oh, Bryce is just basically like gibbering, if you will."

Obvious issue, right, is that we can say the same thing about Mike because like, what does the term "ontological essence" mean? Like, he's just bringing up confused terms which have no meaning. It just confuses the discussion. But he also wants to claim that like because Luke says that, or if I'm, he points to the Gospels and how they say Jesus appeared in a new form to the disciples after his resurrection because of the glorified body, he wants to say that, "Okay, well, therefore, form can't mean nature." Two things: form meaning nature in Philippians doesn't mean that it's going to mean nature in Luke. Like, there's no reason to assume univocity between how biblical authors use terms, right? They're going to be similar, right? Cuz they're in a similar cultural context, but they can, of course, be different. Second of all, and what this is what Bryce points out, is that, um, when, when you say, when you have a *morphe*, right? That's going to be like an outward appearance reflecting some inward change. When, when Jesus resurrected, his, uh, body was glorified, right? So that when it says there's a new form, that's what it's referring to. He appears different, and there's some form of a change in his body. But with, when it comes to the Logos, right? When he's in the form of God, God-like, unless you want to say this refers to God's glory, in which case Jesus just has God's glory, and this is God. More *morphe* would have to refer to like him having the same divine nature because like, what is it called? Like, God isn't going to have like a literal outward appearance. And we can go into this a little more because I know, uh, some people have arguments against that, right? But the issue is, even in the cases where God does seem to have an appearance, the, the way that it's usually interpreted is that in some way, this is like a visible manifestation of God's glory, right? So in, in that case, right, if that's what *morphe* refers to, then Jesus would have to have the same glory as God, meaning that Jesus would be God. Secondly, right, I feel like Mike's Christology is somewhat like Nestorian, either that or Apollinarian, because Mike says Jesus is, like, he says Jesus is the Word plus the flesh. Like, is the Word, like, he's kind of saying that the Word is like a proper part of Jesus, right? So is the Logos like a subsistent individual prior to the union? Well, no. It seems no. Okay. What about a posterior to it? It seems kind of yes. So like, does the Logos like become personalized? Like, how, how exactly does that work? Like, it's a little bit confusing as to what Mike's model is because he wants to take a Socinian view, but then he also seems to be taking this weird Apollinarian view. But then also, like, what is the relation between the Logos and like God? Like, is the relation going to be one of like proper parthood? Is it identity? Like, what exactly is going on there? Cuz for us, right, we've explained why the Logos, the relation that it has between the divine essence is going to be one of divine, uh, is going to be one of identity, specifically real identity. This is something that Lamb brought up, though. He says that like Mike also contradicts his original claim, like 30 to 60 seconds prior, where Jesus seems to be the subject identical to the Word. But then, you know, then he also says, "Jesus equals Word plus flesh." Like, is the Word identical to Jesus, or is the Word a proper part of Jesus? Like, that, that seems to be a little weird.

Now we can get to the, the interesting part philosophically. Mike, basically, when, when Bryce asks him is like, "In what sense is the Logos identical to Jesus?" Right? Because he wants to, because Mike says that there's some form of an "is" relationship between Jesus and the Logos, right? Because it says, because he wants to say that there's some form of an identity relation between Jesus and the Logos. And so what Bryce was trying to figure out is like, what, what type of identity relation is that? Right? So in what sense is that identity relation? But the way that Mike answers is that he seems to think that there's like a similarity in properties or like some indiscernibility in properties, which basically grounds or like requires an identity relation between the two. So indiscernibility literally just means like you can't differentiate a property between the two things. So if X and Y are indiscernible, then there's like a, then relative to some set of properties, every property that X has is held by Y. Right? So what Mike seems to be saying is that the Logos is indiscernible to Jesus in like a qualified respect. Meaning that even if they're not indiscernible like absolutely, they're indiscernible like qualified to like a specific set of properties. But the issue is, right, is that that, and we're going to get into this later, he seems to be conceding relative identity, right? Because there's other, like, two options: either a) Jesus is identical to the Logos, where the indiscernibility between Jesus and the Logos is absolute, meaning that they're absolutely identical, meaning they share all properties. Well, then in which case, Jesus is just going to be identical to the Logos. And we've already shown that that the Logos just is God. In which case, Jesus is going to also be God, because obviously the Logos and Jesus are going to share the same properties, right? But that's obviously going to be contradictory to Mike's view. Meaning that Jesus and the Logos, they're not going to be absolutely identical, but instead the identity relation is just going to involve an indiscernibility relative to a specific set of predicates. But if you do that, if it's relative to a specific set of predicates, then at that point, you're just conceding relative identity or something similar to it. And that's going to be important because Mike basically wants to argue that like relative identity is problematic when applied to the Trinity. But if he's conceding relative identity himself, then that's going to be a problem.

So the, what we're about to cover though, is going to be, uh, somewhat like technical and philosophical, right? But the issue is, like, Mike also brings this stuff up when he talks about like logic and identity. So clearly he has no issues with it. Plus, his name is literally "Metaphysics Mike," so you know, it's perfectly fine for me to critique him on logical or metaphysical grounds, uh, rather than just textual.

Firstly, when it comes to relative identity, we need to understand what a sortal is, because in relative identity, we're basically saying that like two things can be identical relative to a sort, right? Okay, so we need to figure out what exactly is a sort and like how are they identical to that? How are they identical to each other relative to that sort?

Firstly, sort. So this is from Molto's paper. He says, "Sortals are a subset of count nouns which convey a criterion of identity for for the individuals falling under them. Woman is a sort because there is a determinant amount of women in that class. For example, thing is not a sort because it is not the case that there are determinant amount of things in that class." Right? So, for example, let's say you have like a box and you want to count how many things are in this box. Well, it would depend on what sortal "thing" is going to be like taking the place of, right? So, for example, if you say, "Here's a box of red balls," and you count three, you count three things, right? So basically, to sum it up, a sort can just be considered a count noun that's that has like a criterion of individuation, right? So it's going to have a determinate amount of things, right? So man, dog, woman, horse, god, right? So those are all going to be terms that can be counted. So that's all a sort.

Secondly, now that we know what a sortal is, we can first give like an example of like what relative identity theorists are like kind of getting at, right? So this is an example that is commonly given. So what this text says is, "Suppose that I show you three pictures representing first a clay statue of David, second, that same clay mush, that same clay mushed up into a ball, and third, that clay reshaped into a statue of Goliath. Suppose I then ask, 'Is the thing in the first picture the same thing in the last picture?' You would probably ask me for clarification. You would answer yes if I meant to ask whether the first picture was the same clay as the last picture, whereas you would answer no if I meant to ask whether the first picture was the same statue as the last picture." So these two things, they're they're going to be the same clay, but they're not going to be the same statue. And so that's going to be one example, right? So what he argues is that "same clay" or like "same clay object" can denote a relation of relative identity, and then "same statue" as denotes a different relation of relative identity. And so kind of the idea is like, it's similar to like the Trinity. The Father is the same God as the Son, but not the same person. Right? So that, that's going to be a Trinitarian example. And that there's obviously other examples you could give in with relative identity, right? So like with identity over time, right? Like I, I am the same person that I was two years ago, right? So that's going to be a relative identity statement right there because I'm the same relative to personhood, right?

Now secondly, right, we can go over how we would individuate things, right? So this is what, uh, from Nicholas Griffin's dissertation on relative identity. It's pretty old, right? But I, I think it's still good to explain this. So what he says is, "The identity criteria conveyed by a sort are best regarded as a bundle of principles, hence criteria than criterion. One such principle must clearly be relational. If the concept of S identity can be analyzed and if A and B are the same S, it follows that there is some relation apart from A equals SB which, or A is relatively identical to B with respect to X or with respect to S, I mean, which they satisfy. Even within the framework of absolute identity theory, quite a lot of work has been done formulating such a relational principle for different categories of items. For example, the material body, for for example, for material bodies, the relation of spatial temporal continuity is often proposed. For persons, the sameness of memory. For universals, similarity. For what Strawson calls private particulars, for example, thoughts and sensations, exact similarity and sameness of person on a Strawson account, and so on. In some cases, we see that we may analyze S identity in terms of some other sortal identity, sensation identity, person identity, for example. But this will be subject to further analysis in terms of memory identity, say, and so on. In each case, there's a basic relational concept constitutive of S identity for a given sort of S. Though this does not exhaust the identity criteria conveyed by sort of S."

Now to kind of explain what he's saying, right? Is let's say I want to say that like, um, A is the same F as B, or let's say I want to say that is the, like, A is the same statue as B, right? What he's saying is that there's going to be some like reason or like condition or criteria that holds which allows us to say that statement, right? So it's going to be grounded in that statement, if you will, right? So, for example, if I want to say Apollos is the same person as Apollos when he started that stream, uh, there's going to be some like criteria which allows me to say that. Like, so for example, like with persons, it's going to be like a criteria of like memory. With, um, other objects, it can be like spatial temporal continuity and so forth, right? Now, this isn't to say that the ident, like the criteria is always going to be known, right? Like, for example, maybe someone thinks that the criteria for, I don't know, like personhood is going to be like, uh, let's say having the same body, right? Or like having the same, uh, matter, and yet clearly persons change their matter over time, right? So the, the atoms that constitute me at this current time are going to be different from the atoms that constitute me at the time of my death. So it can't be like pure, like identity in terms of matter that constitutes personal identity. So this person wouldn't actually know the identity, the criterion for sameness in terms of person, and yet they would still know that I'm the same person. Right? So the identity criteria doesn't need to be known. Same, same thing with like, uh, let's say like a, like a little child. Like a little child can recognize that they're the same person that they were two seconds ago, but they're probably not going to grasp like what the, like philosophical preconditions for that are, right?

So this is going to be important because metaphysics Mike, what he's saying is that like the kind of like the thing which grounds the identity relation that he's talking about is a similarity in properties. So for him, that's kind of like how he answers this question is that like the Logos is identical to Jesus or there's an identity relation between the Logos and Jesus because of like the similarity in properties. This is going to get kind of like in, in indiscernibility with respect to certain properties. Right? So the, the idea is like if two things are like identical relative to a sort, then they are indiscernible. Remember, indiscernible just means they have the same properties, but it's going to be indiscernibility restricted to a range of predicates, right? So for example, let's say, um, let's say this Apollos is the same person as he was yesterday. Now, when we say that, that's going to imply that Apollos right now and Apollos yesterday are going to share some set of properties. But under a relative identity reading, they're not going to share all properties, right? So for example, maybe Apollos yesterday was tired, but then Apollos today is energetic. So there, so the similarity in properties or the indiscernibility of properties is only going to be relative, right? So maybe you can say Apollos shares, uh, like, in order for two persons to be the same person, they have to, um, I don't know, share like, I, I guess you could say like continuity in memory or something like that, right? Uh, well, the exact conditions for like what personhood is is going to be like disputed amongst like philosophers, right? But I think you get the idea, right? Being the same person as isn't going to imply having the exact same properties in every respect. It's only going to, uh, imply having every property with respect to a certain set of predicates, right? So it's not going to be, so this is like in opposition to Leibniz's Law. What Leibniz's Law says is that if two things are identical, then they exactly share the same property, or they, exa, or they absolutely share all properties. So this is going to be like an opposition fact. In another way, you can say it's a relativized Leibniz's Law because what you're basically saying is that like two things are identical relative to this sort if they're indiscernible relative to a specific set of predicates. So this is why, um, uh, Bab's paper on the relative identity in the Trinity says, "A sort relative identity relation is an indiscernibility relation for a restricted range of predicates and the character of a given sort." Right? So if A is identical to X with respect to F, or relative to the sort F, then there's going to be a set of predicates corresponding to that sortal F, of which, um, A and X are going to be indiscernible relative to. And then, uh, if you go to the next slide, there's, uh, something similar there with what, uh, Nicholas Griffin says in his dissertation about, uh, indiscernibility, right? Basically, what he says is that for each, uh, substantial term, so think horse, dog, etc., right? Uh, for each term F, there is a class of predicates corresponding to that sort, such that identity relative to that sort implies an identity, an indiscernibility with respect to the predicates in that, uh, set of predicates. So it's going to be indiscernibility relative to the set of predicates corresponding to F. Right? So you can formalize this as being like, if A is the same F as B, then there's some set of predicates such that every predicate that A satisfies in that set is satisfied by B, and vice versa. So you'll notice that this is similar to Leibniz's Law, except it's just relativized to a specific sort. So he gives an example of like why, where like, where we use this idea, right? So for example, he says, "A is the same car as B. A is a motor vehicle. So B is a motor vehicle, right?" So notice how like the property motor, like being a motor vehicle, that's going to be in the set of, uh, predicates corresponded to by, um, car, right? So saying that A is the same car as B means that they need to be indiscernible relative to motor vehicle, for example, right? Meaning that if A is a motor vehicle and B is a motor vehicle, and I'm sorry, if A is a motor vehicle and A is the same car as B, then A, then B is also a motor vehicle. This is, so this is kind of going to give into like the, I guess you could say, conditions for like relative identity, right? If you go to the, uh, next slide, we can kind of give a summary.

So basically, what relative identity is going to be saying is that there's multiple types of identity relations. So, for example, "same statue as" is going to be a different type of identity relation than "same clay object as," right? Or "same person as" might be a different identity relation as "same car as." So they're going to say that there's multiple identity relations. Then they're going to say that identity relations can and do correspond to sortals, right? So "same car as" is an identity relation corresponding to the sort "car." Then they're going to say, "Three, objects can bear some identity relations with respect to each other without bearing all identity relations with respect to each other." Right? So, for example, there's, "same person as" but not "same god," or like, for example, there's, "the Father is the same God as the Son, but not the same person as the Son." Right? Or in, um, in the example of the clay, uh, the object is the same clay, but it's not the same statue. But then they can say, "Objects can be identical to each other relative to one sort, whilst being distinct relative to a different sort." This can and does occur even when said objects are predicated by both count nouns. Meaning that, like, I, if let's say the statue of David, David and Goliath, both of them are statues, and both of the objects are like composed of clay, right? And yet, even though they're the same clay, they're not going to be the same statue, right? Then five, he says, "If an identity relation holds between two things, then those two things are indiscernible relative to some set of predicates, but not necessarily every predicate." Right? So Leibniz's Law, except we've relativized it specifically. If identity is sort of relative, then the two relata in an identity relation are indiscernible with respect to the class of predicates corresponding to that sort, right? Relata is just going to be the things being related. So if you're saying that like X is identical to Y, the identity relation is going to be like predicated over X and Y. Then six, um, one of them is going to be, "an identity relation does not require Leibniz's Law." So I mean, we've already gone over that. And then seven, "we can and do count by relative identity."

Now, this is where Mike's blunder really comes in. If you go to the next slide, you'll, you'll kind of see this. Um, basically, remember what Mike says is that Jesus is identical to the Logos in some sense. In other words, there is an identity relation that holds between Jesus and the Logos. Now, either this identity relation is going to be an absolute identity relation, or it's not going to be an absolute identity relation. Mike seems to think that the Logos and Jesus differ in properties. One is eternal, impersonal, and the wisdom of God, while the other is a personal, human, temporal, and created Messiah. So Mike, if Mike accepts absolute identity, then that's going to be like an issue, right? Because like, how, how can, uh, these two things differ in properties if they're indiscernible, right? That, that's not going to work. So what this is important, right? If the identity relation that holds between Jesus and the Logos isn't one of absolute identity, then it's going to be a different identity relation. At which point, Mike is going to be conceding that there's multiple identity relations, because Mike accepts absolute identity exists. But now he's introduced the second identity relation that exists between Jesus and the Logos. So he's conceding to the first point of relative identity. So he's conceding that there's multiple identity relations. Then Mike rejects an absolute identity between Jesus and the Logos. In which case, three is true because Jesus bears an identity relation to the Word. And yet, there's at least one identity relation that is not held, uh, between Jesus and the Word, that being absolute identity. So Jesus has one identity relation to the Word, but does not have all identity relations to the Word. Now, given that Jesus and the Word do not share in all, all predicates under Mike's view, and yet there's an identity relation between them, six would have to follow, right? Because remember, he wants to deny that Jesus and the Word satisfy Leibniz's Law with respect to each other, and yet he wants to say there's an identity relation between the two. So under his view, you don't need Leibniz's Law for an identity relation. Now, Mike, as I've explained before, seems to be saying that the identity relation is somehow grounded in or entailed by a sameness of properties. So there's an indiscernibility relative to a set of properties. Yet, if this relation is an absolute identity, then indiscernibility cannot be with respect to all properties, but rather to a class of properties. So Mike accepts at least one part of five, right? Cuz remember, five just says that like, if there's a sort relative, or if there's an identity relation between two things, then those two things are indiscernible relative to some class of predicates, and that class of predicates corresponds to the sort that the identity relation also corresponds to. So Mike accepts that first part, right? Because he accepts an indiscernibility relative to a set of predicates. Then the question becomes like, like, what, what does it correspond to, right? Now, Mike doesn't really answer that question. So Mike accepts two, four, seven, and six at least, or like two, four, seven, and like six at least in a qualified sense. So two and four seem to be like necessary, like two and four seem to be like prima facie necessary, right? Because identity, identity relations do correspond to sortals sometimes. Now, how we, like, I guess you can say, like, with, with to the idea that identity relations correspond to sortals, that's just something true in, uh, like ordinary statements like "same statue as," "same clay as." The only thing that like an, someone who rejects relative identity theories would say is that like, okay, maybe it corresponds to like a sort, it's just that like it doesn't matter because you can represent that identity relation, which is absolute identity, right? Obvious issue, right, is that with, with what Mike has accepted is that there's no reason to reject two, four, five, and seven when you accept one, three, and six, right? So because Mike is accepting these like pretty crucial aspects of relative identity, he loses any argument against two, four, five, and seven. So if you go to the next slide, I kind of explained, uh, why.

Oh, okay. So like, as explained before, we typically do use relative identity statements in natural language. So that is, "the same statue." That's going to be a relative identity statement. Now, that's going to require explanation, and the way that like relative identity proponents would explain this has already been explained. It's relative to a sort. But then someone who does not hold to relative identity is going to explain it something like this, right? They're, they're going to say, "One, the relata in an identity relation must be indiscernible." But relative identity denies this. So relative identity is contrary to Leibniz's Law, and thus is false. "Two, all identity statements, including statements such as 'John is the same man as Mark,' are reducible to and or explained by absolute identity statements." In other words, the anti-relative identity theorist would seek to show that relative identity is deficient because it violates prior precedent via one and is unnecessary via two, or yeah, it's unnecessary via two, meaning that we can reject it. The obvious issue is that Mike denies both one and two in this debate. So that means he no longer has any good argument against relative identity. As a side note, right, we can just deny that one and two are true on their own ground. So we can deny Leibniz's Law on its own. Just look at my video on the LPT for that. And it doesn't seem like, uh, identity statements can be like really reduced to mere indiscernibility relations in terms of like Leibniz's Law. It's like, David, the statue of David is discernible from the statue of Goliath. Now, if you go to the next slide, we can, uh, see kind of what the implications of this.

So given, given what Mike has said, saying that the term "is" corresponds to absolute identity or predication is a false dichotomy. And that's important because when Mike runs the logical problem of the Trinity, that requires that the "is" in that statement can only refer to like an "is" of identity or "is" of predication. And then Mike is going to want to say that like an "is" of identity only applies to objects that satisfy Leibniz's Law, or that other types of "is" are ad hoc. Right? Because his argument against relative identity is somewhat in line with one and two. So Mike uses the LPT, as said before. So like, if there's a third type of "is," then the LPT fails because it's logically unsound. On top of that, right, relative identity is just in general used to provide a consistent model of the Trinity, which doesn't fall to the LPT. And actually, Mike has conceded that relative identity models are consistent internally, but then his objection has to do with them being ad hoc. But the obvious issue is that Mike's own interpretation of John 1:1 requires like basically the same thing, right? So if, if you're, if you're arguing that relative identity is ad hoc, then by that same argument, his interpretation of John 1:1 and how he identifies Jesus as the Word is going to be like ad hoc as well. So this gives a dilemma. Either Jesus is identical to the Logos in terms of absolute identity, or he's not. If it is in terms of absolute identity, then obviously Mike concedes that it's going to be like that Jesus and the Logos are going to share the exact same properties. Meaning that the Logos is going to be human and a distinct person from the Father, which he wants to deny. If it's not absolute identity, then Mike is going to be giving up any argument he has against relative identity, in which case, you know, he can't claim that the Trinity is inconsistent anymore. I don't think you guys want.