John 1:1c (Rudolf Schnackenburg)-"The Gospel According to Saint John"

 

Comments As Spam

For some reason, I have a few comments now appearing as spam. Here lately, I possibly deleted two or three comments because I took them to be spam. Apologies if your remarks were inadvertently deleted. I don't know why the blogger/Google is all of a sudden classifying many comments as spam, but I will be more cognizant of this phenomenon in the future.

Herman Bavinck and the Trinity Doctrine (For Informational Purposes)

 The following info comes from https://www.christianstudylibrary.org/article/bavinck-person-christ

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It is no accident, therefore, that the reality of the incarnation stimulated the Christian church to formulate more fully the doctrine of the Trinity. Over against the heresy of patripassianism (literally, "Father-suffering"), which taught that the person of the Son who suffered upon the cross was identical with the person of the Father, the church recognized that scriptural teaching could only be understood within the framework of a clear distinction between the three persons of the Trinity. The history of redemption recounted in Scripture requires that a distinction be drawn between the person of the Father who sends the Son in the fullness of time, the person of the Son who voluntarily condescends to assume our humanity, and the person of the Holy Spirit who equips the incarnate Son for his mediatorial work and communicates the benefits of it to believers. It is simply impossible to do justice to the data of biblical revelation without acknowledging the distinction of the three persons of the Holy Trinity, who remain one in being, purpose, and love in all of their respective works.

Furthermore, even though the church has always insisted that all of the works of the triune God are indivisibly the works of the holy Trinity, the church also taught that the economy of redemption distinguishes the three persons in their respective works. As Bavinck notes,

The Father could not be sent, for he is the first in order and is self-existent; the Spirit proceeds from the Son, succeeds him, and is sent by him. But the Son was the one suited for the incarnation. In the divine being he occupies the place between the Father and the Spirit, is by nature the son and image of God, was mediator already in the first creation, and as Son could restore us to our position as children of God. RD 3:276

κατακυριεύουσιν and κατεξουσιάζουσιν (Matthew 20:25)

A reader asks:

"Does κεφαλή (the head) have any relationship with katakyrieusin (lord it over) or katexousiazousin (wield authority over) from Mt 20:25?"

I could be wrong, but I don't think so. Both of these are compounds of other Greek words, but not of kephale, it seems. See https://biblehub.com/greek/2634.htm and https://biblehub.com/greek/2715.htm

D.A. Carson and John 1:1c

From Carson's The Gospel According to John Commentary: "More, the Word was God. That is the translation demanded by the Greek structure, theos ēn ho logos. A long string of writers has argued that because theos, ‘God’, here has no article, John is not referring to God as a specific being, but to mere qualities of ‘God-ness’. The Word, they say, was not God, but divine. This will not do. There is a perfectly serviceable word in Greek for ‘divine’ (namely theios). More importantly, there are many places in the New Testament where the predicate noun has no article, and yet is specific. Even in this chapter, ‘you are the King of Israel’ (1:49) has no article before ‘King’ in the original (cf. also Jn. 8:39; 17:17; Rom. 14:17; Gal. 4:25; Rev. 1:20). It has been shown that it is common for a definite predicate noun in this construction, placed before the verb, to be anarthrous (that is, to have no article; cf. Additional Note). Indeed, the effect of ordering the words this way is to emphasize ‘God’ as if John were saying, ‘and the word was God!’ In fact, if John had included the article, he would have been saying something quite untrue. He would have been so identifying the Word with God that no divine being could exist apart from the Word. In that case, it would be nonsense to say (in the words of the second clause of this verse) that the Word was with God. The ‘Word does not by Himself make up the entire Godhead; nevertheless the divinity that belongs to the rest of the Godhead belongs also to Him’ (Tasker, p. 45). ‘The Word was with God, God’s eternal Fellow; the Word was God, God’s own Self.’120"

Words of the Month (December 2022)

1. κεφαλή (Greek)-Noun: Bill Mounce offers these ways of defining κεφαλή, "the head, Mt. 5:36; 6:17; the head, top; κεφαλὴ γωνιας, the head of the corner, the chief corner-stone, Mt. 21:42; Lk. 20:17; met. the head, superior, chief, principal, one to whom others are subordinate, 1 Cor. 11:3; Eph. 1:22"

See https://www.billmounce.com/greek-dictionary/kephale


2. eschatology (English)-In theology, this word refers to the doctrine of the "last things." The etymology of eschatology is eschatos + logos.

Holman Bible Dictionary: The teaching concerning the last things in world history. The Greek word eschatos means “last” or “final.” Accordingly, eschatology is the study of the things expected to occur at the end of history. There are two basic ways of approaching eschatology. The first, which has been most common over the centuries, focuses on those final events or situations which have not yet occurred. These are, chiefly, Jesus' return, the millennium, the last judgment, the final resurrection, and heaven and hell. Over the last century, however, scholars have generally agreed that the New Testament was written in an atmosphere pervaded by eschatology.

See https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hbd/e/eschatology.html