Rebuttal to Libyano's Points

If jesus lacks any essential properties, he can’t be God

I agree with this. No dispute here

Proverbs 8:22 says Wisdom is created

The BHS text does not use the word for “creation”

Ignatius claimed Jesus was a creature

He just admitted the epistle he appeals to is inauthentic

The shorter resension (which all scholars accept as authentic) indisputably presents Ignatius as God

Colossians 1:15 is a partitive Genitive

See Wallace for refutation for this

Jesus doesn’t know know things that God knows (Mark 13:32)

- The Catholic Catechism states: “This human soul that the Son of God assumed is endowed with a true human knowledge. As such, this knowledge could not in itself be unlimited: it was exercised in the historical conditions of his existence in space and time.” (CCC 472)

- Jesus’ ignorance of the hour while in his incarnate state is part and parcel of the “kenosis” Philippians 2:7 speaks of: He “empties himself” in the sense of relinquishing the use of certain divine prerogatives/attributes during his earthly ministry

- “Jesus purposely but temporarily laid aside the exercise of his omniscience as part of what was involved in becoming a human being.” (Walter W. Wessel and Mark L. Strauss, “Mark,” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Matthew–Mark, vol. 9, 935–936)

Jesus is given authority by God (Matthew 28:18; John 5:27)

- Jesus being “given” things by the Father actually makes sense if one takes into account the Monarchia of the Father—all Trinitarian paradigms broadly agree that the Father is the source/fount of the Godhead, and whatever divine traits/prerogatives the Son has flow from the Father

- Within the context of Jesus being incarnate as a man, the “giving” language also makes sense within the context of Jesus’ Kenosis (Philippians 2:7); he is recieving back that which he laid aside when he emptied himself

- Incidentally, “giving” language is used of YHWH in the OT as well—Israel is referred to as YHWH’s inheritance (Psalm 68:9, 78:71, 79:1), but who did he inherit Israel from?

- This would be enigmatic from a Unitarian perspective, but actually makes perfect sense if one posits YHWH as multipersonal

Consusbstantiality is a doctrine that only shows up centuries later

- Libyano points to the ante-Nicene fathers as evidence that the early church lacked a clear doctrine of consubstantiality, but this is a misunderstanding of how doctrinal development works

- The early Christians received revelation from God and took time to synthesize a paradigm for explaining the sum total of what that revelation teaches, with each generation building on the insights of the last

- Analogy: The development in our understanding of Physics (Newton to Einstein to Quantum Physics)

- While I have no problem with doctrinal development, I think we should not overstate how long it took; the gap between Ante-Nicene Christology and Nicene Christology is narrower than Libyano makes it out to be!

- Example: Ignatius of Antioch refers to Jesus as ὁ θεός multiple times in his epistles, not to mention references to God becoming human and shedding blood

- Even the two-stage Logos theorists (e.g. Irenaeus, Theophilus of Antioch and Tertullian) believed in the consubstantiality of the Logos (Bryan Liftin, “Tertullian on the Trinity”)

- If Libyano claims their views don’t count because they disagree with Nicea on other details, that’s just shifting the goalposts

Jesus died; God cannot die

I’d like Libyano to define what he thinks “dying” is here

John says Jesus “gave up his spirit;” I don’t see why this is a problem

2nd Person singular = 1 Person

See Numbers 6:23-27 for a counter-example

Also Exodus 20