The third passage that White considers in his opening presentation in the “Is Jesus Yahweh?” debate with Dale Tuggy is what he calls the “hymn to Christ as to God” in Philippians 2:6-11. It’s not a hymn and it’s not addressed “to Christ.” It’s effectively an encomium or paean, perhaps a condensed piece composed independently in praise of Christ. That aside, White says that

The first passage which James White considers in his debate with Dale Tuggy is Hebrews 1:10-12, in which the writer directly applies Psalm 102:25-27 to the Son. You can find my treatment of the second passage, which I did first, here.

For no particular reason, I have started listening to a recent debate between James White and Dale Tuggy on the question “Is Jesus Yahweh?” I’m thinking I’ll pass an impartial eye over contributions made on both sides, just to see what we can learn, starting with White’s claim that when John says that Isaiah “saw” Jesus’ glory (Jn. 12:41), he implicitly identifies Jesus with YHWH seated on the throne in the vision in Isaiah 6:1-3.

The Bible tells the story of the building and rebuilding of the people of God. I think that the church today is having to rebuild again, and I have been looking for a simple image or metaphor that captures the process and the basic components. This tower of five wooden blocks is about as simple as I can make it, and the explanation will have to be over-simplified to fit within a single article. Bear with me.

In his new book The New Anabaptists: Practices for Emerging Communities (2024), Stuart Murray says that the Anabaptist vision is “profoundly and resolutely Christocentric” to a degree not found in other traditions. Evangelicals, for example, make much of the birth and death of Jesus but have little to say about what happened in between. “We heard over and over again why Jesus had to die but nothing about the reasons why he was killed by those who felt threatened by his life and teaching” (36).

Jesus says in John 8:58: “Before Abraham was, I am.” Raymond Brown says that ‘No clearer implication of divinity is found in the Gospel tradition.’ This has been much debated, and I’m not here especially interested in the immediate christological meaning. It’s the background to the statement that “Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day” that I want to look at and what this might tell us about John’s reasons for putting these words into Jesus’ mouth.

In their “manifesto for theological interpretation,” Craig Bartholomew and Heath Thomas assert the priority of theological interpretation over historical-critical interpretation. History must be understood theologically as the arena in which the painful and hopeful redemptive narrative of the Bible is fought out. Because history is a web of particularities and contingencies, because it’s messy, historical-criticism is an unavoidable part of the process of interpretation, but it cannot be allowed to exclude divine agency.

So they ask the question: “How are we in history to apprehend the God who is at work in history?” (8). Historical criticism cannot help us here because, more often than not, it contradicts “the plain intent of Scripture’s authors to testify to God’s involvement in the world.”