Dr. Daniel I. Block Tells How the Bible Defines “Worship”?

Last updated on: April 29, 2019 at 10:59 am By Kermit Zarley

Daniel I. Block is a renowned Old Testament professor at Wheaton College, arguably the foremost evangelical college in the U.S. Dr. Block has written many books and journal articles and received numerous awards. This month’s Christianity Today has an article by him entitled “Worship God At All Times. If Necessary, Use Music.” It is one of the best articles on worship and ecclesiology that I have ever read. It is based on his book, For the Glory of God: Recovering a Biblical Theology of Worship (Baker, 2014).

The main thrust of this article is that the larger American churches refer to the several minutes of music in their Sunday services as “worship,” whereas the Bible has quite a different viewpoint about what “worship” is. He says we should rethink our language such as “praise and worship,” “worship time,” and “worship leaders,” all referring only to music. Block calls it “a restricted notion of worship.”

Block then examines the mention of “worship” in our English Bible. He says in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), kara means “to bow low,” and barak means to “to kneel,” all before the Lord God. He says these are the main words in the Hebrew Bible which are translated “worship” in the Old Testament of most English Bibles. Dr. Block then says there is no difference between the two testaments, that worship in both involves a physical act. He says of the Greek New Testament that proskuneo, the main word translated “worship” in the New Testament of English Bibles, means “to lie prostrate” and that pipto is sometimes associated with it, which means “to fall down.” Also, proskuneo can mean “to bow the knee,” usually understood as touching one or two knees to the ground.

Thus, Dr. Block’s main point is that the words translated “worship” in English Bibles refer to a physical act, which is not what most people think when they read the Bible. (I have to say at this point that Muslims do this, actually five times per day at the five scheduled times for prayer, whereas Christians pretty much never do it.) Thus Block says, “We cannot speak of biblical worship without starting with this physical gesture of submission and homage to God the Father and Jesus the Son.” A main biblical text he cites is Psalm 95.6, “Come, let us bow down in worship.”

However, church buildings and their seating are not constructed in such a way as to permit lying prostrate or even bowing the knee. But the Jews’ temple at Jerusalem was did enable people to do these physical acts. In fact, scholars and historians tell us about ancient Israel that at the several annual festivals at Jerusalem’s temple, whenever priests conducted some ritual and uttered God’s name, YaHWeH, Jews had to immediately bow down or lie prostrate to signify both their submission to God and reverence for his name. This concept is drastically missing in Christian worship. However, some of us elderly folks may find it difficult to bow an arthritic knee or one with a knee replacement!

Thus, Block concludes that we should reorient our thinking about worship being mostly the music at church by realizing that worship involves much more. He says of acts of worship, “In the New Testament, these would have included meeting for instruction by the apostles, fellowship, ‘breaking bread,’ and prayer (Acts 2:42), as well as the ordinances of baptism (Matt. 28:19) and the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor. 11:23–30). Remarkably, although we know these were sometimes accompanied with song (e.g., Matt. 26:30), this is never formally prescribed. Paul’s instructions concerning ‘speaking to/admonishing one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs’ (Eph. 5:15–21, Col 3:12–17) occur in the context of appeals to let all of life—rather than just worship services—be the context of worshipful living.”

I only disagree with one point in Dr. Block’s article, but I don’t want to harp on it here. He says, “While biblical worship is Trinitarian, strikingly, the New Testament never speaks of anyone addressing or praying to or praising the Holy Spirit. Nor does it ever portray people worshiping the Spirit with this physical gesture.” That is correct, and I believe it is because the Bible does not teach the post-apostolic doctrine of the Trinity. (For more information about this subject, click “Christology” in the menu on my blog.)

I highly recommend this article by Dr. Block. And I’d like to read his book.

(In my book, The Restitution of Jesus Christ [available at kermitzarley.com], I address “worship” in multiple sections and mention these Greek words translated “worship.”)

Discovering the God of the Bible with First Principles Thinking

Last updated on: March 21, 2019 at 4:00 pm By Kermit Zarley

Chris Anderson is the curator of TED, a non-profit organization that promotes innovative thinking and entrepreneurship. He recently interviewed Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and Space X. Musk told Anderson he attributes his success to mostly two things: hard work (1oo hours per week the past 15 years, which he recently scaled back to 85 hours) and First Principles Thinking. (This info is taken from an online article today by Business Insider.)

“the practice of actively questioning every assumption you think you know about a given problem or scenario, and then creating new knowledge and solutions from scratch.” It is the opposite of the most common principle of “building knowledge and solving problems based on prior assumptions, beliefs and widely-held ‘best practices’ approved by (sic) majority of people.”

That’s what happened to me nearly forty years ago regarding my beliefs about God and Jesus. I was sitting in my study one day, reading Jesus’ Olivet Discourse in the Gospel of Matthew in the New American Standard Bible. I came to text wherein Jesus said of his yet future second coming, “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone.” I knew this verse well. But suddenly, I saw it like I had never seen it before.

Jesus said in this saying that he did not know when he would return, yet he said God the Father knows. I had been a Trinitarian Christian for twenty-two years and a serious student of the Bible. (See “At Forty Years Old I Best Saw the Light–Trinity Doctrine No Long Seemed Right.”) I had never questioned the church teaching of the doctrine of the Trinity. I had also been taught its corollary–the Hypostatic Union of Christ. That means that Jesus had two natures, divine and human, and that whenever he said or did anything, it was always from the perspective of one of these two natures. In this case, I had been taught that Jesus said that from the perspective of his human nature. Thus, he knew the time of his return in divine nature, but he did not know it in his human nature.

For the first time in my life, I actually blurted out to myself audibly, “that makes Jesus look like a liar. He said he didn’t know the time of his return, yet he really did know it.” I quickly concluded that I needed to look into this matter. And I did, seriously.

I first did so by buying a red-letter New Testament (Jesus’ saying in red) and reading only Jesus’ sayings in the New Testament gospels. I was looking for only one thing–did Jesus ever say straight out that he was God. I was astonished to discover that he never did.

Now I began to employ this First Principles Thinking that Elon Musk talks about. I had always assumed that Jesus said in the Bible that he was God. Moreover, I had been taught that he did. But when you look at what scholars cite in Jesus’ sayings to prove that he said he was God, it is just about zero.

After about two years into this study, I decided that, according to the Bible, Jesus never said he was God, and it is questionable if anything else in the Bible says he was/is God. Eventually, I became certain that it doesn’t. In so concluding, I was using First Principles Thinking by questioning assumptions and establishing new knowledge for me.

But it didn’t take me long to learn that it wasn’t really new knowledge. There never was a church doctrine of the Trinity until it was developed by three theologians in the 370s and made official by the Catholic Church in 381. Thus, for hundreds of years Christians had never heard of the idea that God is three co-equal and co-eternal persons, who are God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

And it appears from all literature available to us that Christians never began thinking Jesus is God until the early second century CE, thus at least seventy years after Jesus lived here. Moreover, even when it became common for Christians to think Jesus was God, during the second and third centuries, they all believed he was not God to the same degree as the Father. For they understood Jesus’ statement literally, “The Father is greater than I” (John 14.28), so that Jesus was not as great as God was.

Actually, I was going back to the first principles of Christian Faith. They were that God is one, a single person, The Almighty, the Most High, and Jesus was his agent whom he sent, like he sent prophets before him, to preach salvation, heal people, and die on the cross for our sins. That is the New Testament gospel, not that God is three persons. For Jesus had prayed to the Father, saying, “And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 173). This is the First Principle of knowing the God of the Bible and Jesus Christ.

“Our Favorite Heresies”?

Last updated on: December 4, 2018 at 11:11 pm By Kermit Zarley

This month’s issue of Christianity Today magazine has a small piece entitled “Our Favorite Heresies.” It shows the results of a survey conducted by LifeWay Research and Ligonier Ministries. The survey questioned “Americans with evangelical beliefs (using the four-part definition endorsed by the National Association of Evangelical).” The results of the survey show “12 areas where today’s believers have most gone astray.” No definition is provided for the word heresy. I have blogged before that evangelicals use this word often without defining it. Most people want to know whether being guilty of heresy refers to a non-Christian or just a misinformed Christian.

Each of the so-called heresies are stated and the percentages given of the people surveyed who believe them. The first supposed heresy is, “Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God.” A whopping 73% of apparent evangelicals surveyed said they believed this statement. And 4% said they “somewhat agree.” The second heresy is, “The Holy Spirit is a force, not a personal being.” Nearly half, 46%, of those surveyed said they believed this statement. And 11% said they “somewhat agree.” According to the two organizations who conducted this survey, I’m a heretic regarding both statements. But, of course, I believe they are wrong and that I am not a heretic.

To evaluate these two survey statements, we need to consider the doctrine of the Trinity. Evangelicals think you must believe in the doctrine of the Trinity or you are not a Christian. So, evangelicals would also say non-Trinitarians are heretics. The Trinity doctrine is that God is three co-equal and co-eternal Persons: Father, Son (Jesus Christ), and Holy Spirit. Accordingly, the Son, Jesus, preexisted throughout all eternity past, and the Holy Spirit is a Person. The article further informs correctly that the first heresy was “ruled out by First Council of Nicaea (325).” And the article rightly says the second heresy was “ruled out by First Council of Constantinople (381).” Thus, the doctrine of the Trinity, established at the latter council, renders all those people who subscribed to the first two so-called “heresies” as non-Christians.

However, a footnote to this article supplies an abbreviated four-part definition of an evangelical by the NAE which LifeWay Research and Ligonier Ministries apparently endorse. It says, “Evangelicals are defined by the NAE as those who strongly agree that the Bible is the highest authority, evangelism is very important, sin can only removed by Jesus’ death, and salvation comes only through trusting in Jesus as Savior.”

I most heartedly believe all four of these precepts. However, as stated above, I also subscribe to the first two statements asked in the survey. I do so because, as a former Trinitarian for 22 years, I have believed for the past 36 years that that is what the Bible teaches. That is, Jesus did not preexist, and the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God and thus not a separate, individual person from a supposed Godhead. As I have repeatedly stated on my blog, if God is three Persons then man would have to be three persons since man in made in the image of God. Likewise, God’s Spirit is to God what man’s spirit is to man because man was made in God’s image. Since man’s spirit is not a separate person from himself, neither is God’s Spirit a separate person from himself. Most biblical texts which seem to indicate that the Holy Spirit is a Person are merely personifications, just as wisdom is personified in the Proverbs 8.

I have posted before on my blog about this subject and the NAE’s definition of an evangelical. To learn more, click on any of the following posts:

8/11/16: “I Am Not a Heretic.”

1/13/16: “Am I an Evangelical or Not?”

1/16/14: “What Must Christians Believe?“

A List of Christology Posts in Header Bar

Last updated on: November 13, 2018 at 11:31 am By Kermit Zarley

Here at my Kermit Zarley Blog, you can now click “Christology” in the header bar to see a list of all of my posts, since I started this blog in mid-2013, on Jesus not being God in the Bible. This list is now up to 132 posts. Most of them are 2-3 pages in length. A few are about the Bible not saying God is three Persons. Called The Trinity, the word “trinity” is not in the Bible. Most of these posts represent condensations of my 600-page book entitled The Restitution of Jesus Christ. It is available at my website kermitzarley.com. This book interacts with the academy by citing over 400 authors, nearly all of them biblical scholars. But these references are not in the blog posts.

My Christological Journey (Part 12 of 12)

Last updated on: November 23, 2018 at 10:49 am By Kermit Zarley

Conclusions about the Doctrine of the Trinity and Identity Christology

So, does the Bible ever unequivocally say God is three Persons/persons? No! Does the word “Trinity/trinity” ever appear in the Bible? No! In the NT gospel sayings of Jesus, does he ever state expressly that he is God? No! In all of the more than twenty evangelistic sermons or summaries of such in the book of Acts, do those early Christians ever say God is three Persons/persons, or God came from heaven to earth to become a man (Incarnation), or Jesus is God? No! On the contrary, the NT indicates first-century Christians believed none of these things. And Jude, Jesus’ brother, had written as scripture, “contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints” (Jude 3). Instead, Gentile church fathers later changed this gospel (“good news”) which the early Jewish Christians had been proclaiming throughout much of the world in the first century.

The first Christians were Jews who believed in one God and that this God is “one,” not three. The Apostle Peter affirmed that only the Father is God and Jesus is “both Lord and Christ/Messiah” (Acts 2.36). The Apostle Paul defines the Christian gospel in 1 Cor. 15.3-5 by saying, “For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas [Peter], then the twelve [apostles]” (NRSV). This definition of the gospel does not say Jesus is God or God is three Persons. According to Jude and Paul, later Gentile Christians had no authority to change the gospel that had been handed down to them by the first Christians, who were monotheistic Jews.

Yet, starting in the early second century, Gentile church fathers began to depart from this simple gospel by declaring Jesus is God and eventually that God is a Trinity. There are several reasons for this departure from the NT gospel. Many church fathers were influenced by Greek philosophy largely due to living in Hellenistic lands. They did not know Hebrew and therefore could not read the Hebrew Bible. Some became somewhat anti-Semitic, which further enabled them to reject the Jews’ monotheistic belief that God is a single person. So, they departed from the clear and simple NT teaching about the Father as God and Jesus as Savior and Lord. They substituted for it their complex doctrine of the Trinity that included the Incarnation of a preexistent Jesus as God. The Catholic Church made this Trinity doctrine official at its Second Ecumenical Council held at Constantinople in 381. The Church thereafter required that people must believe in this doctrine of the Trinity to be a Christian. And over 1,000 years later, Protestant Church leaders endorsed this non-biblical teaching due to their failure to scrutinize it.

In contrast, the Apostle Peter had preached to thousands of Jews on the Day of Pentecost, saying “Jesus of Nazareth” was “a man attested to you by God with deeds of power, wonders, and signs that God did through him” (Acts 2.22), indicating Jesus’ dependence upon, and subordination to, God. Peter later declared similarly to others, saying “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power,” so that “God was with him” (Acts 10.38). If Jesus had been God, he would not have needed to depend upon God his Father for such powers. The NT declares repeatedly that Jesus is the Christ-Messiah of Israel, that he was a virgin-born, sinless man who died on the cross for our sins, that God vindicated him by raising him from the dead on the third day, that he ascended to heaven forty days later to sit down with God on God’s throne, and that in the future he will return to earth as “King of kings and Lord of lords” Rev. 19.16) to establish his God-given, worldwide kingdom of peace which will never end.

To summarize, I had been a Trinitarian Christian for twenty-two years, from eighteen years of age to age forty. Then, in 1980 I began my investigation into whether or not Jesus is God. It lasted for about the next fourteen years. It occurred in three stages as follows: (1) in 1982, I decided God is not three co-equal and co-eternal Persons and that Jesus is God, but to a lesser extent than the Father is God; (2) in about 1987, I changed to believing the Bible nowhere says Jesus is God because I now understood that the two biblical texts that previously hindered me from so believing—John 1.1c and 20.20—do not say Jesus is God; (3) in the early 1990s, I became convinced that the Bible nowhere says Jesus literally preexisted.

To conclude this account of My Christological Journey, I will now quote something from the last two chapters of the preface of my Restitution book that is very important to me as a caution to Trinitarians and non-Trinitarians who are professing Christians:

“we have inherited a tradition of anathemas pronounced by church officials upon dissident, non-traditionalist, yet professing Christians. Such adversity still continues unabated in many church communities today, bolstered by some traditionalist scholars [believing Jesus is God]. . . . in 1999 a doctrinal declaration was issued and signed by over a hundred evangelical Christian leaders, mostly Americans, which includes the following article: ‘We deny that any view of Jesus Christ which reduces or rejects his full deity is Gospel faith or will avail to salvation.’ I could react as contrarily by charging that anyone who believes in the doctrine of the Trinity worships three gods and thereby violates the First Commandment, as Sir Isaac Newton alleged and the Koran states (Quran 5:72-73), and thus cannot be a true Christian. But I reject such allegations.

“In conclusion, I contend that that the NT verifies that anyone who (1) truly believes Jesus is the Christ, who died for their sins and arose bodily from the dead, and (2) confesses Him as Lord, manifesting evidence in their life to that effect, is indeed a genuine Christian believer and should be accepted as such.”

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To see a list of titles of 130+ posts (2-3 pages) that are about Jesus not being God in the Bible, with a few about God not being a Trinity, at Kermit Zarley Blog click “Chistology” in the header bar. Most are condensations of my book, The Restitution of Jesus Christ. See my website servetustheevangelical.com, which is all about this book, with reviews, etc. Learn about my books and purchase them at kermitzarley.com. My books are: The Gospels Interwoven (1987); Palestine Is Coming: The Revival of Ancient Philistia (1990); The Third Day Bible Code (2006); The Restitution of Jesus Christ (2008); Warrior from Heaven (2009); Solving the Samaritan Riddle: Peter’s Kingdom Keys Explain Early Spirit Baptism (2015).

My Christological Journey (Part 11 of 12)

Last updated on: March 25, 2023 at 3:39 pm By Kermit Zarley

Writing The Restitution of Jesus Christ and Choosing a Pseudonym

I ended my full time career on the regular PGA Tour at the end of 1982. It was because I no longer was an exempt player. That means you automatically are eligible for all tournaments and thus don’t have to qualify on Monday’s. (In 1983 they started the All-Exempt Tour, as it is now.) With a family and at age 41, I wasn’t going to go to the Tour Qualifying School to try to regain my exempt status. But I wasn’t sure about what I was would do for a living. I had narrowed it down to four options: (1) start my own golf club manufacturing company since I had been sort of secretly developing hollowed-out wood and metal club heads for the past thirteen years; (2) accept my friend Karsten Solheim’s offer to work with him as his assistant in Research and Development at his PING golf club company in Phoenix, Arizona; (3) become a golf course designer developing my idea about a reversible golf course; (4) or do all of the following: work part time with Jim Hiskey in the new Golf Fellowship ministry he was creating, give instruction clinics and be the keynote banquet speaker at one-day golf outings conducted by para-church organizations such as Young Life, Youth for Christ, Fellowship of Christian Athletes, etc., and study and write theological books about half of my total work time. I was increasingly favoring the first and fourth options.

I think I could have been quite successful if I had chosen the first option. I would have gotten investors. Gary Adams of Chicago had started the golf club manufacturing company TaylorMade. In early 1982, he brought his new, hollow, metal wood driver out on Tour to test it with us pros. I was the third pro to try it, which was at the San Diego Open, and I started playing with it. I had been working on this idea for years before Gary had done so. I then told Gary that he would revolutionize the wood club industry, which became known as “metal woods,” and that’s what happened. Yet I was still thinking I could become his biggest competitor.

Well, I decided on the fourth option. So, that’s what I did from 1983 until 1991. Then I turned fifty years of age and became eligible to compete as an exempt player on the PGA Tour’s fledgling Senior Tour (later renamed the Champions Tour). And that’s what I did until I retired from competitive pro golf in 2005. But that was not by choice. I was still very much exempt. Orthopedic injuries caused by my profession had gotten the best of me, so I was forced to retire.

When I was having to make my decision in late 1982 about what kind of work I would do, I think one thing tipped the scale and thus caused me to decide on the fourth option. It was this conviction that I had that God was guiding me about researching Jesus’ identity. Yet I was only a layman, thus without important tools such as knowing Greek and Hebrew that are so essential to biblical scholars. Yet I felt that I was onto something very important that was largely unknown to almost the entire Christian community. I then thought I might be able to write a book about it. I knew it would be difficult for me, as a layman, to get a theological book published. Yet I had other ideas about writing books on theology. In the 1970s, I had started what I called “a hobby” of trying to write a book on what I was learning about end times biblical prophecy.

So, for decades I was writing this book on what I was learning about Identity Christology. I eventually titled it The Restitution of Jesus Christ. I chose this title to make it similar to the title of Michael Servetus’ last book, The Restitution of Christianity, which soon got him executed.

Two distinguished NT scholars critiqued this manuscript. In about 2002, my close friend Dr. Scot McKnight read an early draft of it. He had said that with this manuscript I was “on the cutting edge of where leading scholarship has been going on this subject,” though he was not convinced of it. He advised two things: (1) remove some material that was not really pertinent to my thesis, and (2) don’t make the book too lengthy. That was really good advice. I did as he said about the first point. I wanted to follow the second point. But the text ended up being about 500 pages. That is because I included 100 pages of history about the development of Christology throughout church history. I did this because most books on this subject rarely have any such history. As it turned out, many readers have expressed appreciation about this part of the book.

In December, 2007, my friend Dr. Dale Allison read the final draft of this book and provided many suggestions. I incorporated just about all of them in the manuscript. Dale emailed me saying, “As you may have guessed from things of mine you’ve read, I’m largely sympathetic. The argument against the tradition is convincing. As to what we should replace it with, I’m far from certain, but the God was in Christ proposal is sensible. [That’s what I call my viewpoint about Jesus’ identity, as in 2 Cor. 5.19.] There is no way to predict the response to a book in advance; but it merits discussion. You’ve done a lot of work.”

Indeed, I estimate that during the 28-year period in which I studied this subject prior to the book’s publication, I read about a thousand books on Jesus’ identity. [I cite over 400 authors in the book.] And I had to get most of these books through the inter-library loan system, which was a lot more work. Plus, I scoured hundreds of Bible commentaries, mostly in many libraries, reading what they say about the dozens of critical Bible texts that are pertinent to this discussion.

I finally completed this book, The Restitution of Jesus Christ, and self-published it in 2008. Wipf and Stock Publishers would have published it in two volumes or if I would have shortened the manuscript. I refused to do either. So, I published it under the pseudonym I thought of, “Servetus the Evangelical,” without divulging my name. Why did I do this? About eight months before its publication, my son Michael suggested I publish it under an anonymous pseudonym. He made this suggestion because, as my regular caddy on the Senior Tour, he was well aware of the rejection I was suffering from some of my Christian brothers for taking this viewpoint even though I didn’t say much about it. People usually knew about it by rumor, but didn’t ask me about it. Most surprisingly, only months after Michael suggested this, my close friend Professor Scot McKnight advised me likewise without knowing Michael had already suggested it. Prior to Michael doing so, I had never even thought of it. And I had never discussed it with Scot. So, I thought God was speaking to me through both of them.

I started thinking and praying about a pseudonym. For weeks, I had no clue. Then, one night I was walking into a sophisticated restaurant and dance club here in Scottsdale, Arizona, a favorite place of mine. Its name was Barcelona, referring to the city in Spain. It made me think of the brilliant Spaniard Michael Servetus. John Calvin, the preeminent Bible teacher of the early Protestant Reformation, had hailed the Catholic Inquisitors in Geneva to arrest Servetus due to two books he wrote against Trinity teaching. Servetus’ respected family was devoutly Catholic.

The imprisoned Servetus underwent three months of almost daily interrogation under Calvin’s direction. Then Switzerland, a church-state, tried and condemned Servetus as a blasphemer for publishing against infant baptism and the Trinity doctrine. Servetus was then burnt publicly at the stake. An outcry arose against this in Europe, and it later contributed to the formation of Unitarianism. (I don’t call myself a Unitarian because, like Trinitarian and Trinity, it isn’t in the Bible. Plus, Unitarians later became Universalists. Instead, I call myself a “One-God Christian.”)

I had written in my book about this Michael Servetus tragedy. Many have regarded him as a Christian martyr, but Trinitarians have deemed him a non-Christian heretic. Due to parallels between me and Servetus, I immediately decided with certainty that my pseudonym would be “Servetus the Evangelical.” The word “Evangelical” was intended as an assertion that I still regarded myself as an evangelical even though nearly all evangelicals would not. My contention was that evangelicals, like Protestants, have claimed to believe in “sola scriptura” as the arbiter of theological controversy, to which I was appealing, rather than church creeds, as they also did.

Soon after I decided on this pseudonym, I was surprised to learn that Michael Servetus and I were born on the same day of the year—September 29^th. And for many centuries before Servetus lived, as well as during his lifetime, the Catholic Church had celebrated Saint Michael’s Day on September 29^th. It was a commemoration of Michael the archangel who is mentioned in the Bible. Catholics added a fun and tasty tradition to this celebration by eating a cooked goose.

I was startled when I discovered that Michael Servetus was born in 1511. Thus, the 500^th anniversary of his birthday was going to be in the year 2011, which also would be my 70^th birthday. I then began to wonder if these similarities between me and Servetus was divine providence. Then I published anonymously The Restitution of Jesus Christ on September 29, 2008, under the pseudonym Servetus the Evangelical. I planned to reveal my identity in three years, thus on the 500^th anniversary of Servetus’ birthday and my 70^th birthday. The first print was 200 copies. They sold out in about a year. The second print was 500 copies. I had them made in my Triangle Book invention format. But my patent attorney said it would be costly with the USPTO to continue my anonymity as the author of this book. So, I had to reveal my identity about year earlier than planned, which I did on my website. Within 24 hours after doing so, about 200 websites announced it. That’s because I had a marketing strategy in which I had a contest to identify me as the author by giving weekly clues. It worked in generating interest. However, many were deflated when they learned I was not a real scholar as was generally supposed. My ego was bruised when some wise guy declared on the internet, “Oh, he’s just some pro golfer who no one has ever heard of.”

My Christological Journey (Part 12 of 12)

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My Christological Journey (Part 10 of 12)

Last updated on: March 25, 2023 at 3:38 pm By Kermit Zarley

(All of the following of this essay, thus parts 10-12, was written on 10/19-20/2018)

Overcoming the Last Two Barriers and Abandoning the Preexistence

Into the late 1980s, there were two NT texts I called “barriers” because they were the only biblical texts keeping me from believing the Bible only says Jesus was a man, thus not God. So, I continued to believe Jesus was and is divine, but not to the extent the Father is. These two texts were John 1.1c and 20.28. I knew quite well that many distinguished NT scholars who believe Jesus is God and have written extensively on whether or not Jesus is God had cited these two texts as preeminent in the Bible which identify Jesus as God. Then two things happened to me about the same time regarding these two texts. I think it was in 1987.

One time I was at DTS’s Mosher Library when I got up the nerve to ask the research librarian Marvin Hunn, whom I knew, if he was aware of any reputable Bible scholars who believe the traditional translation of John 1.1c (“and the Word was God”) is incorrect, so that its Greek text does not identify Jesus as God when compared to v. 14. Marvin said, “Yes.” Then he mentioned Philip B. Harner’s article in the 1973 issue of the preeminent theological periodical the Journal of Biblical Literature (“Qualitative Anarthrous Predicate Nouns: Mark 15:39 and John 1:1”). I asked Marvin what he thought of this article. To my surprise, he said he believed Harner was right. But he added that there are many other NT texts which affirm the deity of Christ. He also mentioned that PhD student Dickinson at DTS had come to the same conclusion in his doctoral dissertation about John 1.1c. (I stated above that Dr. Johnson was Dickinson’s dissertation supervisor.) John 1.1c presents a grammatical issue about how to treat its anarthrous (=no article) theos. In this article, Harner endorses the New English Bible translation of John 1.1c which reads, “what God was, the Word was,” which does not say Jesus was God. Today’s English Version similarly reads, “he was the same as God.” This is what the Johannine Jesus meant when he said, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14.9). Jesus did not mean he was the Father, but that he was like the Father in character. So, I was now convinced that the traditional translation of John 1.1c, “the Word was God,” is incorrect as Harner claims.

Another time I was reading Rudolf Bultmann’s commentary on the Gospel of John wherein he treats John 14.10-11. This text relates that Jesus said to his disciples at the Last Supper, “I am in the Father and the Father is in me.” Bultmann then cited Thomas’ Confession in John 20.28 for comparison. I was shocked that he did this without saying any more about it. And of all the commentaries on the Gospel of John that I read, Bultmann was the only commentator I had read who made this comparison of scripture.

I then thought for the first time that that is exactly what Thomas meant when he said to Jesus in John 20.28, “My Lord and my God.” That is, Thomas was identifying Jesus as his Lord and the Father indwelling Jesus as his God. I thought that makes perfect sense. The Johannine Jesus had taught this Mutual Indwelling multiple times (John 10.38; 12.45; 14.9-11). So, I now believed strongly that in Thomas’ Confession, he was merely applying what Jesus had taught him days earlier about the Mutual Indwelling. Many distinguished NT scholars regard Thomas’ Confession as the strongest NT text which identifies Jesus as being God. I came to believe that my take on this is the most important part of my book.

Finally, these two barriers were removed. It was a huge relief for me. I mean that the traditional translation of John 1.1c and the traditional interpretation of John 20.28 were no longer barriers because I now believed that they were just flat out wrong. From then on, I have always believed that the Bible does not identify Jesus as being God whatsoever. And I believed that this was by far the biggest theological change in my life, thus much more important than the rapture issue.

However, I still believed that Jesus preexisted as the Logos-Son. But I did not think that necessitates that Jesus was God. Many Jews have believed that some of their heroes of the faith preexisted; but they did not think that requires that they were Gods/gods. There are several NT texts that I had always thought indicated Jesus literally preexisted, primarily his lengthy teaching in John 6. Therein he says, “I am the (living) bread that came down from heaven” (vv. 41, 51). But during the early 1990s, I gradually became convinced that Jesus did not mean this literally, just as he didn’t mean literally in this sermon, “eat my flesh and drink my blood” (v. 56).

So, from the early 1990s to the present, I have believed that the Bible nowhere identifies Jesus as being God or that he literally preexisted as a person prior to his human life here on earth. Instead, my belief is that Jesus is Lord and Savior to those who truly believe in, and follow, him, whereas only the Father is “the only true God” (John 17.3).

My Christological Journey (Part 11 of 12)

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My Christological Journey (Part 9 of 12)

Last updated on: November 23, 2018 at 10:51 am By Kermit Zarley

My Second Christological Discussion with Dr. S. Lewis Johnson

About two years later, I phoned Dr. S. Lewis Johnson and asked if I could visit him again to resume our discussion on Christology. He accepted, and this time we talked for about three hours in his home. One thing I recall him saying was, “postribulationism is winning the battle against pretribulationism on the seminary level.” I learned years later that that was quite true. Lewis may have said that since he was now teaching at TEDS and being more exposed to other viewpoints. He also seemed to now favor this posttribulationism, which is called classic premillennialism as opposed to Dispensational premillennialism, which DTS advocates.

This time Lewis was firmer with me about Christology than the previous time we discussed it. The main thing I remember him saying this time was, “If you keep on believing this way, you are not a Christian!” That was a jarring pronouncement. But I really was not surprised since I knew that both the Catholic and Protestant Churches proclaimed that non-Trinitarians, especially people who do not believe in the full deity of Christ, are not Christian. And they often refer to the Nicene Creed for support. It identifies Jesus as “very God of very God” and declares several anathemas on anyone who believes otherwise.

Ever since I had gotten to know Dr. S. Lewis Johnson, he would write me a letter about once per year. I always appreciated that and would write back. But now, after we had had these two, lengthy, Christological discussions, and I was no longer believing Jesus is fully God, Lewis didn’t write me anymore or phone me. Moreover, we never saw each other again. I was very disappointed. I knew all along that I would be losing Christian friends because of my change in Christological belief. Indeed, it was many.

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