Jesus's Name Is God Name

Answering a question on Quora: 

"If Jesus was not the Archangel Michael in heaven, what was his name there?"

The question starts with an assumption that Jesus had a name in heaven. This is called “begging the question,” meaning that the assumption has not been shown to be true. (The term is almost always misused by people who mean “demands the question.”) Before asking what Jesus’s name was, one should first ask whether Jesus had or even needed a name.

This may sound like I start out on a tangent, but if you read patiently, you’ll see that it stays directly on topic.

Our names serve to distinguish us from one another. When a Being is unique in type, He does not need a name to distinguish Him from other, similar beings. So, since there is exactly one God, God does not need a name.

Also consider that having been named implies that a previous being must have created you and, thus, had the right to give you a name. Since no previous god created God, no being had the authority to name Him. So in heaven (more properly, in eternity), God was not given a name.

Instead of a formal name, God has assumed many titular names that tell us about Him. Examples include El (God), Adonai (Lord), YHWH* (I AM or I AM THAT I AM), and most interestingly, Elohim (Gods). Elohim is interesting because, although it is plural, it takes a singular verb. It hints about God’s nature in the very first chapter of the Bible.

(The pronunciation of YHWH was forgotten around 200 BC; Jehovah is an anglicized version of a Spanish version of the Latin version of the Greek version of the vowels from Adonai added to the consonants YHWH.)

Angels are created beings. Jesus / Christ / Messiah is the Creator.

All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. John 1:3, NASB 1995

For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities— all things have been created through Him and for Him. Colossians 1:16, NASB 1995

John clearly states that Christ created the universe. Colossians repeats that and specifically includes all personal beings, which includes angels. If Christ created the angels, then Christ cannot be a mere angel.

There’s a word for the Creator of all things: God.

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Isaiah 9:6 ESV

But of the Son [Jesus] He [God] says, “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever, the scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom. Hebrews 1:8 ESV

Many models of the nature of God exist. Only one such model resolves all the Bible’s claims. Physics and cosmology tell us that when God created the universe, He created even time and space. They’re facets of the universe.

The triune version of the Trinity fits with science. God, being timeless, used His creative power to exist in, experience, and interact with His creation, and with each other, as three temporal Persons. Each Person, or center of consciousness, is fully God, having the same essence in eternity, yet having a separate consciousness in time.

The three Persons voluntarily took on distinct roles: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. (People often make a category error, confusing difference due to a hierarchy with difference in nature, but the inference does not hold up logically. Role does not necessitate a difference in nature because three co-equals can assume a hierarchy in order to create order among the roles that they assume, as well as to exemplify messages about love, authority, and obedience to their creatures.)

In the Father-role, God remains unseen in heaven.

Not that anyone has seen the Father, except the One who is from God; He has seen the Father. John 6:4, NASB 1995

In the Son-role, God represents and explains the Father to us.

No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten* God who is in the bosom** of the Father, He has explained Him. John 1:18, NASB 1995

(* Translators are divided about whether monogenes, “only-begotten,” means literally only-begotten (a male counterpart to only-born) or is an idiom that meant unique, one-and-only as a result of having taken on a human body. Both descriptors lead to the same conclusion.

** “In the bosom” was a word-picture of one person resting his head on another’s chest, indicating platonic or familial trust and intimacy.)

In the Son-role, God added a human nature to HIs divine essence, and we call that earthly representation, Jesus of Nazareth. Yet the Son represents the Father because he has the same nature in every dimension.

Who [Jesus], being the radiance of His [the Father’s] glory and the exact expression of His substance, and upholding all things [Creation] by the power of His word…. Hebrews 1:3, Berean Literal Bible

So Jesus is the Creator who spoke the universe into existence and upholds it; and whose essence is exactly the same as the Father’s essence. In fact, since there exists exactly one God, they have the same essence. The theological word for this is “consubstantiality.” Thus, although there has been, is, and ever will be exactly one God, God chose to enter His creation three simultaneous times as three consciousnesses or personal Spirits.

(I have not addressed the Holy Spirit in this because the question is specifically about the Son. I don’t think He minds.)

Other models of the Trinity, such as

• three Gods (a common false accusation from Muslims)
• an angelic Jesus (Jehovah Witnesses)
• a child-god (“Mormons” or Latter Day Saints)
• a costume-changing God (Modalists or Oneness Pentecostals)
• a human Jesus (Unitarians and “Progressive Christians”)
• God plus little or developing gods (Jehovah Witnesses, Mormons, Word-Faith Pentecostals)

create numerous contradictions in the Bible. Only the triune model (one timeless God as three temporal Persons) reconciles all the biblical evidence.

Additional reason: If it is logical to ask the heavenly formal name of God the Son, then it is also logical to ask the heavenly formal name of God the Father and of God the Holy Spirit. If asking the heavenly formal name of God the Father or God the Holy Spirit is not logical, then neither is it logical to expect God the Son to have a heavenly formal name.

Although God has, for our sake, distinguished Himself from imaginary gods by taking on various descriptive, titular names, He has no need for a formal name in heaven.

Copyright 2021, Richard Wheeler. Permission granted for non-remunerated use, but please give credit where credit is due.

Jesus: Only Way to God the Father

Answering a question on Quora: 

Where in the Bible does it say the only way to the Father is through the Son?

New Testament

John 14:6

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”

Acts 4:12

And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among mankind by which we must be saved.

Note that approaching the Father requires “being saved.” This means that God must do what we cannot: redeem, regenerate, justify, and sanctify. Since the Son provided the means of redemption, it is not too much to ask that we acknowledge that the Son is whom He is and receive the gift as a free gift.

Old Testament

Psalm 2:11–12

Worship the LORD with reverence
And rejoice with trembling.
Do homage to the Son, that He not become angry, and you perish in the way,
For His wrath may soon be kindled.
How blessed are all who take refuge in Him!

Additional Evidence

The relationship between the Son and the Father is defined explicitly in the New Testament. Old Testament clues are there, but relevant passages are better interpreted in hindsight, that is, in light of the New Testament.

The first clue is in the opening lines of the Bible, where God says, let us make…. People who deny that the one God used creative power over space-time to experience it as three Persons frequently explain away “us” as a “royal we.” However, the literal interpretation is reinforced by the plural, “Gods,” in In the beginning Gods created the the heavens and the Earth. And the unity of the plural Gods is reinforced by the singular number of made. The best interpretation is that one God exists in space-time as three Persons in communication with each other.

Another clue, less clear in the Old Testament, is that, while God remains in heaven and unseen by any human, He also walked the earth in the appearance of a human. This can be traced from the Garden of Eden, through Abraham’s entertainment of strangers, to God’s revelation of Himself to Moses. The earthly liaison, so to speak, gave Himself a descriptive name, I AM — as contrasted with all other gods, who are not. He chose this name for our sakes but does not actually need one. No previous god existed with the authority to name Him, and no other god exists from whom He needs to be distinguished.

(The Hebrew word translated I AM and the LORD is YHWH. Note that the word has no vowels and the pronunciation was lost a few centuries before Jesus was born. Anybody who makes a big show about its pronunciation “knows” more than what the facts establish.)

To prevent desecration of God’s “name,” translators began a tradition of translating YHWH as the LORD (in capital letters). This is the God whom all Jews and Christians aspire to know.

In the New Testament, Jesus of Nazareth reveals Himself to be YHWH, the I AM (John 8:58), the Word who was God, who was in the beginning with God, and through whom all created things were created (John 1:1–3, Colossians 1:16–17). In this light, passages such as Isaiah 9:6 make sense:

For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; And the government will rest on His shoulders; And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.

If you aspire to know the Lord, that is, God or God the Father, you aspire to know the Son. If you know the Son, you know the Father as well (John 14:7–11), but you cannot know the Father if you reject that the Son is who He says He is (John 8:9).

Copyright 2021, Richard Wheeler. Permission granted for non-remunerated use. Please give credit where credit is due.

Why Christians Don't Use "Jehovah" As Often

Answering a question on Quora:

Why do you rarely hear Christians who are non-Jehovah's Witnesses, referring to God as Jehovah God (or rarely even Just Jehovah) like the Jehovah's Witnesses do?

The Watchtower (the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ organization) teaches that God has a personal name, and it is Jehovah. It teaches that knowing and using God’s name is critical to being able to worship Him.

Many Christians (non-Jehovah’s Witnesses) do use the name Jehovah, but much less for several reasons. If you want a short answer, skip to the end; but if you want to learn the reasons behind the answer, keep reading.

A more complex doctrine of God requires more terms.

The Bible gives evidence that Persons called the Father, the Son (Jesus, Christ, Messiah, the Lord, the Son of Man), and the Holy Spirit are God — and yet, there is but one God. Modalists such as Oneness Pentecostals try to solve this apparent paradox by saying that God switches between personas. However, this creates problems such as when the Son and the Father speak to each other and when scriptures say the Father subjects all things to the Son except Himself. Latter Day Saints (“Mormons”) say Jesus was, like all angels, demons, and humans, a spirit-child of God the Father who will become a god of his own world on Judgment Day. This, like the Modalist god, violates the scriptures’ teaching that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. The Jewish faith denies the evidence that Jesus was divine, and many deny that He even existed. The Watchtower accepts that Jesus existed, but teaches that He was an angel, a small-g god who became Jesus of Nazareth and then became an exalted angel (again, see Hebrews 13:8).

Christians resolve the paradox by supposing that the Creator of the universe – meaning that God created not only matter and energy, but also space-time – can do anything He wishes, so long as it is good and not a logical impossibility. From the scriptures’ claims, they conclude that God used creative power to function in and experience space-time as three Persons. This Tri-unity (one God as three Persons) is a solution, not a problem. It bypasses many problems that Bible-recognizing religions face when they reject the Trinity.

As a result, to Christians, God has a more complex identity. They can speak of God in general as God, the Almighty, the Creator, etc.; or they might speak of a specific person, namely, the Father, the Son, or the Holy Spirit. (Note that God is “Lord,” regardless of which Person you speak of; but for the sake of communication, the scriptures often distinguish the Father from the Son by calling the Father, God, and calling Christ, Lord.)

Jehovah is not God's name.

Another reason Christians do not use the term Jehovah very often is that it is not actually God’s name! God does not need a name. There are no other real gods from whom to distinguish Him. Also, no god preceded and created Him, so nobody had the authority to name Him. On the other hand, God does take many descriptive titles and names, not for His own sake, but for ours.

The name "Jehovah" started when the Israelites were enslaved in a land with many so-called gods. (You will see, a few paragraphs later, why I put "Jehovah" in scare quotes.) When God was commissioning Moses to lead the Israelites, Moses asked whom he should say was sending him. God responded, “say to the sons of Israel, 'I AM has sent me to you.'" This was a functional name chosen by God, not for His own sake, but for Israel’s. He is the I AM, as contrasted with all the other gods, who ARE NOT.

Jehovah is an incorrect pronunciation

The Hebrew word translated I AM is YHWH. Note that ancient Hebrew writing had no vowels. It had only consonants.

During the 400 years before Christ, the Jews had a revival of respect for God. They became so obsessed with rules that they would not dare to pronounce YHWH. Instead, when speaking, such as when reading scriptures aloud, they substituted the name Adonai, which means Lord. Consequently, they forgot how YHWH was pronounced! By the time of Christ, it had become common practice to combine the vowels from Adonai with the consonants YHWH, which produced Yahowah or Yahweh.

Now, transliterate Yahowah to Greek, transliterate that to Latin, and transliterate that to English, and you get Jehovah. So Jehovah is, at best, a twisted pronunciation of a word whose pronunciation was lost over 2,000 years ago.

Jehovah is an obsolete transliteration

In 1611, the Authorized Version (King James Version or KJV) used the word Jehovah in some places (and LORD, in all caps, in most places) to translate YHWH. Many readers of the KJV use the word Jehovah as a name for God. But many others simply use God or Lord, and the spread of modern Bible translations that do not use the word Jehovah reinforces that trend.

Within and outside Christianity there are movements such as Hebrew Roots that make a big deal about pronouncing YHWH and Jesus with original Hebrew pronunciations. This sounds cool and may make a person feel that he has special knowledge or special reverence for God, but biblical Christians do not think there is magical power in words and pronunciations. The power is in the meaning they convey, and God is omni-lingual.

Jehovah is Jesus

There’s yet another reason Christians use the word Jehovah less often. John chapter 1 teaches that Jesus is the Word, meaning that He is the expressive member of the Tri-unity. Jesus Himself said, “Before Abraham was, I AM.” In other words, it was God the Son, before he took on the bodily form we call Jesus, who spoke to Moses out of the burning bush. So, in a monumental irony, the term that the Watchtower uses to label God actually refers to the Person whose deity they deny!

Summary

Christians use the word Jehovah less than Jehovah’s Witnesses do because the Jehovah's Witnesses inflate its usage and misuse it. Christians use it even less than they used to because laymen (as contrasted with clergy) are growing in awareness that it is a descriptive label rather than a personal name, it is a bad transliteration of a word whose pronunciation has been forgotten, it is not a general label for God, it is an incorrect label for God the Father, and Christians reject the idea that words and pronunciations have intrinsic power. God is just as good a "name" for the Creator as any other.

Copyright 2021, Richard Wheeler. Permission granted for non-remunerated use (meaning, you don't make money by plagiarizing it). But please give credit where credit is due.

Could God Be a Monad?

Can God the Father be God without Jesus or the Holy Spirit?

(From a question on Quora)

The question is asked in present tense, and it is a bit ambiguous. I take it to mean, Is God the Father able to remain God if God the Son and God the Holy Spirit were split off, eliminated, or retracted from the universe?

Your question could also be taken to mean, Could God the Father have chosen to be a unitary God without having also existed as Jesus or the Holy Spirit?

Based on the relationship between God and the universe, I would say yes with respect to His substance but no with respect to His character. The same answer applies to either interpretation of the question.

One of the arguments for the existence of God is known as the Kalam Cosmological Argument. It states:

• Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
  
• The universe began to exist (around 13.8 billion years ago)
  
• Therefore, the universe has a Cause. 

From the nature of the universe and related arguments, one can derive (without turning to revealed information such as the Bible) that the Cause is timeless, spaceless, non-contingent, unimaginably powerful, volitional, and unfathomably intelligent. In other words, God.

According to General Relativity, time, space, matter, and energy are so intertwined that if God created the universe, He created time and space, as well. Creative power over time and space allows their Creator to be omnipresent and omnitemporal — which explains omniscience with respect to both every location and every time.

Creative power over time and space also allows God to enter and experience time and space as one Person (or center of consciousness) or as a billion Persons, yet remain One God outside of the Universe. As it happens, He chose to exist in time and space as three Persons. Those three Persons, while remaining in every way equal, voluntarily took on different roles and titles: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Due to the feat of entering time and space, all three Persons have the same substance (spirit). If God were a creature of the universe, this would be counter intuitive. However, with God having His “home” or “natural” existence outside of time and space, all three Persons can consist of the same spiritual substance.

We would be bothered by the physical law that two things can simultaneously occupy the same space at the same time. However, God’s substance is Spirit, not physical; so He is not subject to the same limits as we are.

Since all three Persons consist of the same substance, eliminating one or two of the Persons would not affect the existence of the third Person. Neither would it affect the existence of God outside of time and space.

So, with respect to God’s substance, one Person of the Trinity could exist without the other two.
But is this consistent with God’s character? God is relational and loving, and He has no needs. To exist as a unitary Person (a “monad”) would leave a relational God without any source or object of love until He created intelligent life. If God has no needs, then this makes it probable that God existed as three Persons even “before” creation. As Genesis 1:1 says, In the beginning, Gods (Elohim, “gods”) created (singular) the heavens and the earth.….

If the Son and the Holy Spirit ceased to exist in the universe, God the Father would still be God. However, He would cease to be “the Father” because you can’t be a father without at least one person in the role of “the Child” (or “the Son”).

Also, the roles of the three Persons teach us about relationships and solve problems that I won’t go into now. (For example, how can God remain untouched by corruption and at the same time experience incarnation? Or how can God simultaneously express His wrath and be the subject of that wrath in our place?) God would have to either fulfill the functions of all three Persons or eliminate some of those functions.

If God is God, then He is maximally great. If God is maximally great, then any other form in which He existed in the universe would be less than maximally great. By definition, a less-than-maximally great god would not be God.

To Modalists such as Oneness Pentecostals and to sects such as the Watchtower (Jehovah’s Witnesses), Oneness is not a problem. Modalists believe God is a quick-change artist, switching between three hats in order to deceive people into thinking He is three Persons. But that makes God a deceiver. The Watchtower teaches that only the Father is God because the Son is just an exalted archangel and the Holy Spirit is just an impersonal force of God.

But we are approaching this from the view that all three Persons are God, so a lonely, God is an unsolvable problem for Modalists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Jews, and Muslims.

So my final answer is that, if two Persons ceased to be, the third Person could continue to be God. However, as a monad, God would have had or might still have unfulfilled needs and would be less than maximally great, so without the Son and the Holy Spirit, He would not be God.

Copyright 2020, Richard Wheeler. Since I originally posted this answer on Quora, I probably lost the right to claim copyright. However, I ask that if you use this material, please give credit where credit is due.

A Partial Case for the Trinity

God is Jesus, God is the Father, but Jesus Is Not the Father

I wrote this for someone on Quora who seemed unsure about whether Jesus is God, but not the Father.

Science tells us that, when God made the universe, it had to involve creating energy, matter, space, and time. Having creative power over space and time, God entered time to experience it in three roles. From our perspective, God is three Persons, yet one God.

It is, as we used to say, mind-blowing! Here is just a sample of of the biblical evidence:

• Jesus called Himself “I Am” (John 8:58).  God called Himself I AM (Exodus 3:14) 
  
  (Note: Through translation from Hebrew to Greek to Latin to English, YHWH turned into “Jehovah,” which has little resemblance to the original word. For this reason, sects that make a big deal out of knowing the name “Jehovah” are founded on a myth.)
  
  
• Jesus claimed to have existed before Abraham, who lived about 1900 years earlier. (John 8:58)
  
  
• John wrote that God the Son (“the Word”) made all things that have come into being. (John 1:3)
  
  
• Paul wrote that God the Son created all things, and He is what holds all things together. (Colossians 1:16-17)
  
  (Note 1: In verse 16, one very bad translation inserts the word “other” so it reads, “created all other things.” They insert the word because they deny that the Son of God was created and not the Creator.
  
  Note 2: Some will say, “But look at verse 15! It says he was the first one born, so He was created. However, the Greek word translated “firstborn” in verse 15 does not mean “first one born.” It means Preeminent One. If you search the scriptures, you will find men who were called firstborn but were not the first ones among their siblings to be born. They were “firstborns” despite not being first ones born.)
  
  
• Jesus existed with the Father before creation, sharing in God’s glory. (John 1:1-2, John 17:5, John 17:24)
  
  
• If you read the last reference in context (John 17), you will notice that Jesus talks to the Father as separate Persons. The Father sends, glorifies, give authority to, gives followers to, gives a mission to, and shares glory with the Son. The Son prays to, glorifies, receives glory from, accomplishes work assigned by, shared and will share the glory of, conveys the words of, goes forth from and returns to, the Father. And that’s just the evidence from one chapter that, although the Father is God and the Son is God, the Father and the Son are two distinct persons.
  

As I said, this is just a sample of the evidence. Many scoff at the Trinity, but they have to twist hard to get the scriptures to indicate that the Son and Holy Spirit are not Persons of God, or that God just switches identities to trick us into thinking a single Person doesn’t pray to Himself, delegate to Himself, send Himself, go forth from Himself, and obey Himself.

Here’s why this is very important: If you were saved by the wrong God, you still need to be saved.