BROOKLYN, N.Y., FEBRUARY 9TH, 1933
BROOKLYN, N.Y., FEBRUARY 9TH, 1933
My Dear Mr. M — — , — I duly received your letter, also Mr. P———’s paper.
I regret you have such serious apprehensions as to what I have said about the sonship of Christ, and I shall gladly be of service to you if I can, so as to relieve your mind.
But the position created by your letter is peculiar for, while you wish me to write something ‘simple’ on the subject, you show that you radically disagree with me. While I quite believe that some may not understand fully what I have said, you cannot be included, for your letter makes clear that you quite see what is meant and you seek to combat it as wrong. How then can a simple paper help you? Of what good can any paper do that aims to promote what is unscriptural? Still, as I said, I am ready to help if possible, but I can hardly undertake to express what I hold as the truth more plainly than what I have already said or written. However, you may [p. 384] not have heard or seen all, and so I give below a list of unpublished papers of mine on the subject in question:
A letter to Mr. A. Oliver.
A letter to Mr. Besley re W. H. W———’s printed letter.
A letter to Mr. P———.
A letter to Mr. Carter — which you have seen.
What is in print is in the Barnet, Bristol and Birmingham notes, and a late paper entitled ‘Inscrutability’. I believe ——— of the Stow Hill Depot can supply copies of all — published and unpublished; if not, I shall try and procure them for you.
I believe almost all the ‘difficulties’ you mention are dealt with in these papers.
I note in your letter: ‘If I say three persons live in a certain road I should at once be asked, What persons do you mean? What are their names?’ This, I understand, is intended to illustrate that the Divine Persons had names — the names by which they are now known — before incarnation. But there is no human analogy of this great matter, for we cannot say of any man that no one has seen him at any time. In coming into His creation God has taken names that are relative to it, and obviously we cannot assume that those names applied to Him before there was a creation. “I AM” is no exception, for it is to convey to the creature mind that God is, which would be unnecessary if no creature existed. Father and son are terms that in Scripture are first connected with creation. As so known they are applied to Divine Persons as One of Them became Man. This is God coming in in love — taking relationship and names intelligible to the human mind. To say that they existed before without the thoughts that attach to them, as seen in Scripture — generation, subjection, etc. — is surely not right. Of course, if Scripture says they did, those who love God will gladly bow to it, but it does not.
As regards Mr. P———’s letter, I may say that he wrote me at length and I replied in detail, but he did not acknowledge my letter. His paper just received reveals a mind running contrary to the scriptural presentation of fatherhood and sonship. But while his effort is to show that a father and son are necessarily equal, he is obliged to say ‘as nearly ... as possible’. He says, ‘When I call on Brown & Son I would just as soon see the son as the father, other things being equal’. Thus the firm might as truthfully be called Brown & Father! Whereas the title of the business implies that Brown is the [p. 385] father and senior partner. This surely involves superiority. He further says, ‘When the king cannot attend a function ... he sends his son ... his son is himself, only another person’. This is all contrary to fact. The king’s son, as in his house, is subject to him as a father, and as in the realm he is a subject of the king. The king is ‘supreme’ as Peter says. ‘Was Solomon inferior to David?’ Mr. P——— asks. He certainly was, for he made him king. He was superior as his father, as king and by spiritual experience and dignity with God and in the testimony. That Solomon was king while David lived does not alter this; it involves other typical considerations. But Hebrews 7: 7 settles the matter conclusively. “Beyond all gainsaying, the inferior is blessed by the better”. Noah, Isaac and Jacob as fathers blessed their sons.
But while our Lord’s sonship is regarded in this sense in Scripture, as many well-known passages show, this does not touch His Divine Personality, for He is ever “The Same;” the position of inferiority is taken and not obligatory. It was morally necessary that He should take the position of subjection in the relation of Son, among other things, that man and his place as in the divine counsels should be fully set out.
Mr. P———’s illustration as to sending serves him no better than the other: ‘I send my solicitor’ — ‘My’ here implies a right of some kind over the solicitor. It is simply that Mr. P——— has hired the professional man and so as far as the matter on hand between them goes, he has the right of initiative and direction — the solicitor is serving him. Indeed it seems clear that the idea of sending always involves a right or power in the sender over the one sent — however attenuated or modified it may be or whatever the obligation or motive which induces one to take the position of being sent.
As regards John 1: 18, I know of no ‘new translation’ of it different from J.N.D.’s. Attention has been called to the preposition “in”, having in the original the well-known meaning of ‘motion towards’, and so precluding the occupation by the Lord of the position mentioned before He became Man. Mr. Darby calls attention to this preposition in this verse (in a note) and so do other scholars. Alford warns his readers as to it, and Ellicott’s Commentary connects the position indicated with Christ’s return to the Father after He arose from the dead. Our Lord’s eternal Personality is stated earlier in the chapter and is not specially the point of verse 18,
[p. 386] but rather the Only-Begotten Son as in (having come into it as Man) the bosom of the Father. Referring to the words “Who is in”, J.N.D. says, ‘The place where or the state’. “Who is” here is not to establish eternal existence in Deity, as in John 8: 58, but used subordinately to convey the position of the Only-Begotten Son as declaring God. In John 3: 13 we have “who is in”, referring also to place, but here “in” (original) does not signify motion towards, and so does not imply that our Lord reached a place in heaven. His Person is involved. Mr. P———’s deduction (page 2) that brethren ‘have had wrong thoughts regarding the deity of Christ’, as looking on Him as in an inferior position, being Son, in the past eternity, includes himself, as his words ‘nearly as possible’ and his illustrations show unmistakably that, however much he seeks to avoid this, some idea of inferiority in sonship as related to fatherhood exists in his mind. He says, ‘Father and son is a human relationship that expresses as nearly equality as is possible’. Being a human relationship, well known, especially as regarded in Scripture, and taken up by God to make Himself known to men, it cannot be right to rob it as used by Him, of the features that mark it, especially as seen in Scripture. And the fact that our Lord regards His own sonship as retaining subjection and obedience makes this incontrovertible. I need not cite passages.
Affectionately yours in Christ,
James Taylor.