The Incorruptible God?

Proponents of a multi-person God almost never attempt to explain how the preexistent Son of YEHOVAH God was separated from his “godpower” or “essence” to become a man. Frequently they dismiss the problem as beyond all comprehension. They begin with the assumption that since the Trinity exists this transition from God to man must have happened. There is no need to question its logic.

Maybe the Son had a robe and the robe had all the power. Then he removed the robe and “poof,” he shed his power. Then the Father and the Holy Spirit put their heads together and said let’s make the Son into a sperm, and you, Holy Spirit, take the sperm and place it inside the woman Mary. So we assume that the “Son member” of the Triune [or Biune] Godhead must have temporarily ceased to exist at the God level. For some 30 years then we had a Binitarian Godhead. Is this getting a little complex and clinical? Sorry, but to unravel the Trinitarian [or Binitarian] thinking there is no way around complexity for it is inconceivable and confusing to begin with.

All the attributes which make God special and unique have to be temporarily put on the shelf if one is to believe in Yeshua the Messiah as a real human being. The immutability, omniscience, omnipresence and immortality of God have to be suspended for a time. The claim by some Trinitarians is that when the God-Son became the Man-Son then all these God traits were left behind. The eternal Son became mortal man in a transitory form awaiting his return to the Godhead.

Perplexed by this inscrutable Trinitarian idea the ordinary pew-sitter is committed to this puzzle: Even though God can’t die and God knows all and God is all-powerful these characteristics don’t matter because God became a man and left all that behind. So it is said that the immortal became mortal and died.

But what about incorruptibility?

In Romans the first chapter, God indicts the human race for rejecting His knowledge and creative powers. God complains that man, in his rush to reject God and rely on his own wisdom, refashioned God to be like the creation, like animals and corruptible man. Now isn’t that exactly what the proponents of Trinitarian orthodoxy do in stating that Jesus was the preexistent God? They made God corruptible. This corresponds also to the Trinitarian claims of dualism -- the concept of two natures in Jesus which harmonizes with the pagan philosophies of the time. We still have the problem of incorruptibility, though. This is a very challenging difficulty because we can’t get from point A (God) to point B (man) without the meaning of both words -- God and man -- being destroyed. This is the same problem we have with immortality (”tis mystery all -- the immortal dies,” as the famous hymn tells us).

How, if Jesus was God, could he have become corruptible and not done horrific damage to Paul’s statement about God’s incorruptibility? We know that God did not allow Jesus to see corruption, meaning that if Christ’s body had not been resurrected it would have decayed and experienced corruption. The mere act of transitioning from God to human was an act of becoming corruptible or capable of corruption or decay. There is only one way around this and that is to assert that Jesus was not really a man and did not really “come in the flesh,” the corruptible flesh.

Our human existence is a progressive state of corruption. From the moment we are born we are in a constant state of decay, our cells dying and being replaced and some, in the case of the brain, dying and not being replaced.

God made the creation subject to this condition of corruption (Romans 8:20-21) expressly to force us to look forward to becoming incorruptible through Christ and the coming resurrection which will grant us entrance into his glorious Kingdom (I Corinthians 15:23, etc.)

Romans 1:18-22 says that the “wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead (divine nature), so that they are without excuse, because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man and birds and four-footed beasts and creeping things.”

This is a focused indictment by Paul against Greek and Roman philosophical teachings and it summarily destroys, in a few verses, all the pagan ’Gnostic notions of the day. First of all, God establishes Himself (singular, One Person, not three [or two]!) as the only eternal power and divine Being. It is His glory alone which is supreme, as He states repeatedly in numerous verses in Isaiah 44 and 45. The convoluted and complex reasoning of the Greeks, adopted by the church councils, was a product of their own perverted “wisdom” necessary to fill the vacuum of knowledge created by them in rejection of the Hebrew God’s simple plan of salvation for all. Creating their own problem, they attempted to solve it with a maze of mystical theories of One and Three.

The pagans believed that God was impersonal and unapproachable and, therefore, had to be brought down to earth so that mortal (corruptible) man could associated and feel close to God. So they made God like mortal (corruptible) man -- exactly what God said could not be done! In their wisdom they became fools, and why? Because they just could not accept the simplicity of God’s revealed word. They possessed also a deep-seated opposition to the Hebrew faith of Jesus and his belief that God was one Person only.

The irony of the whole story is that God did reveal Himself in corruptible man and “the word became flesh and dwelt amongst us.” But this is a far cry from the immortal God actually becoming mortal man. Jesus the Messiah became exactly what God intended for Adam. Adam failed. The second Adam, though corruptible, led the way to eternal life and incorruptibility. This second Adam was the perfect reflection and image of the Eternal God. Because of Christ’s perfect life in serving God and mankind he became the firstborn among many other brethren.

I Corinthians 15 is another marvelous revelation from God outlining His plan for Adam and the human race. In 34 verses God destroys not one but two unscriptural doctrines -- the immortality of the soul and the Trinity. Christ, the second Adam, was corruptible but he overcame sin and corruption to sit at the exalted right hand of God. “For this corruption must put on incorruption and this mortal must put on immortality.” Thus, what started out as a disaster, man in the garden, will turn into a glorious victory in the Kingdom of the Messiah and the only true God, the Father (John 17:3; I John 5:20).

The Greeks were not far off. Their problem was one of arrogance and pride. They thought they knew better than God and had to complicate matters when the simplicity of God’s Plan would have sufficed. In complexity there is confusion and profit. From the beginning of time powerful men knew that esotericism (secret knowledge) was a way to control the masses. If a political or ecclesiastical body can dictate truth which the average man or woman cannot understand but must believe, on pain of death or excommunication, then power and control are secured.

Knowingly or unknowingly, this is the path the early post-biblical church chose, a path which has led multitudes into confusion. Millions who believe in this “impossible” Christ who is neither God nor man are unable to explain the mystery of the Trinity. They accept it as tradition and often out of fear. How much suffering and pain could have been averted if belief in the simplicity of Christ and his word about himself, God and the Kingdom had prevailed?