A Rebuttal To Anthony Rogers’ Video “The Absolute Equality of the Lord Jesus Christ with God the Father”

In a recent video, released on 9/20/23, Anthony Rogers presents what he thinks is another strong scriptural proof of the full deity of Yeshua – the salutations in Paul’s letters. This video presentation is typical of much of trinitarian apologetics and of Rogers’ penchant for over exaggerating the biblical data. Rogers’ obsession with establishing biblical support for a plurality of persons in God constrains him to find such support in just about any verse of scripture that affords him even the smallest opening. Here is the link to the 8 minute video if you want to hear it for yourself.

The Claim

Rogers’ argument in this video amount to this: In the salutations of Paul’s letters to the churches¹, which typically follow the pattern “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ,” Yeshua is being put on a level of absolute equality with the Father. This is supposed to be established by the fact that Paul connects the two persons, God our Father and the Lord Yeshua the Messiah, by the Greek word kai (and), in a prayer for grace and peace, which is governed by the single preposition apo (from). Rogers confidently asserts that Paul’s use of this syntax thereby makes Yeshua the co-equal source of grace and peace and that this is “an undeniable grammatical fact . . . that is true no matter what self-proclaimed church or . . . authority says to the contrary. This is what the word of God teaches.” Besides this being a supposed undeniable fact of the grammar, Rogers also appeals to the former Princeton professor of Reformed Theology, B. B. Warfield. Presumably, Warfield was the first to notice this “undeniable fact” and Rogers was deeply impressed by this supposed proof of Yeshua’s full divinity when he first encountered it.

The Refutation

The first thing I want to address is Rogers’ appeal to Warfield, as the source from which he gained this understanding. Rogers seems somewhat disingenuous when, after praising Warfield as a stalwart defender of the inspiration of the scriptures and of the Trinity and Deity of Christ and referring to him as “the Lion of Princeton”, he then states that he is not appealing to him as an authority but simply letting us know that he derived this argument from him. If that is the case, one wonders why he went on so about Warfield. That Warfield was a well educated Princeton graduate who ardently defended orthodoxy, tells me nothing about the validity of this argument. What it might rather suggest is that, like many of today’s apologists, Warfield, being committed to both the inspiration of scripture and the orthodox creeds, was inclined to read the doctrines of orthodoxy into scripture, in his defense of both.

The next thing I want to address is Rogers’ claim that Paul’s salutations functioned in a creedal way. This makes little sense to me since it has been noticed by researchers of ancient epistolography that the salutations in Paul’s letters follow the common practice of the time for letter openings, which included who the letter was from, who the letter recipients were, and a greeting, sometimes accompanied with a wish for health and prosperity {see 3 Jn. 1-2}. Paul adapted his greetings to his Christian recipients, changing the customary chairein (greetings) to charis (perhaps here in the general sense of blessing) for the Gentiles in the congregation and then added eirene (the Gr. equivalent to shalom) for the Jewish members of the congregation. This seems to me to simply be Paul’s adaption of the customary letter opening, with a wish for blessing and shalom to be upon them from God and Yeshua. Rogers also intimated that this amounts to a prayer, but I don’t see that it has to be understood as a formal type prayer but only perhaps as a desire or wish, or perhaps as a pronouncement of blessing similar to Num. 6:22-27. It is even possible, due to the lack of a verb in the phrase causing ambiguity, that it could be read as “Grace is yours (or is upon you) and peace from . . .” {see Rom. 5:1-2}. In any case, it is likely that Paul standardized this form of salutation in all of his letters as a sort of signature.

Next, I would point out that in Rogers’ zeal to make Yeshua equal to the Father in deity, he totally misses the obvious, i.e. that in these salutations God and our Father are being equated, so that the one just is the other, and that God is being distinguished from the Lord Yeshua Messiah. To any unbiased mind it should be obvious that what Paul meant when he said “God our Father” is “God, our Father” or “God, who is our Father”, making God numerically identical to our Father. It should be equally as obvious that the connecting word kai (and) is not connecting the two persons together into one being but distinguishing them from each other. The distinction being made is not between the Father and Son in a trinitarian sense, for then we might have expected Paul to have said, “Grace to you and peace from God the Father and God the Son.” The phrase God our Father cannot be construed as referring to one member of a trinity, the Father, as God, thus leaving open the possibility that the Lord Yeshua Messiah is also God. If that is what Paul wanted to convey there are a number of ways he could have done so to make it clear, as the example above shows. Instead, Paul uses language that goes decidedly against the notion that the Father and Yeshua are both to be equated with God. In referring to the Lord Yeshua as the Christ (i.e. Messiah) Paul, as a Jew, could only have meant what every Jew would have understood by the title, that is the anointed one of God. In the Hebrew bible the word messiah (or christ in the LXX) always refers to a human person chosen and exalted by God, never to a divine person. If Paul meant for his readers to understand by his words that the Father and the Lord Yeshua are associated together as co-members of a Triune God, he could not have been less clear. One would have to presuppose such a unity in order to see it in these words.

But what about Rogers’ claim that the single preposition (from) requires us to understand that the Father and Yeshua are “the co-equal source of grace and peace,” thus making them co-equal in deity? Rogers does not say so explicitly, but he certainly does strongly imply that this is some grammatical rule when he says it is “an undeniable grammatical fact“. This is a perfect example of the kind of exaggeration that trinitarian apologists in general, and Rogers in particular, are prone to. Grammar and syntax are often appealed to as establishing beyond any doubt the doctrines of the Trinity and deity of Christ. This is much like the overstated claims of the so-called Granville Sharp Rule², which in reality is much ado about nothing. Even Greek scholars, in their fervor to uphold orthodoxy, sometimes overstate the significance of grammatical factors in texts that bear on the relationship between God and the Lord Yeshua. Bill Mounce, in his Basics of Biblical Greek Workbook, wrote, concerning this construction in Paul’s salutations:

Notice that [apo] is not repeated before [kurios]. This is exegetically significant in Paul’s salutations. If Paul had thought of “God” and the “Lord” as two different entities, he would have had to repeat the preposition. The fact that he doesn’t shows that he views both as the same entity.

But immediately, as if he realized he overstated the case, he added:

It is probably pushing the grammar too far to say that Paul equates Jesus with God, but it does show that Paul views them working in absolute harmony with each other, both being a single agent of grace and peace . . .

So is it true that if Paul thought of God and the Lord Yeshua as two different entities he would have had to repeat the preposition? If so, does this mean that the inclusion of a second preposition in this kind of salutation would explicitly differentiate between God and the Lord Yeshua? If so, then 2 John 3 must be the cause of great consternation to trinitarian defenders³:

“Grace, mercy, and peace will be with us from God the Father and from Jesus Christ the Son of the Father, in truth and love.”

According to Mounce, John must have conceived of God the Father and Yeshua the Messiah as two distinct agents of grace, mercy and peace. Nevertheless, I can hear trinitarian apologists now, averring that Paul shows the unity of essence while John shows the distinction in persons. Trinitarians can’t have it both ways; if they are going to make these grandiose claims for the grammar and syntax then they should apply it both ways.

But is this assertion by Warfield, Mounce and Rogers, that when two or more nouns are governed by a single preposition that the author is trying to convey a conceptual unity between the objects, establishing them as a single agent, really a hard and fast rule of Greek grammar?

In an article by James Davis titled Single Prepositions with Multiple Objects in Matthew 3:11 and John 3:5: An Exegetical Argument Running Amok?, he gives a number of examples from the NT which show there is no real difference between whether a single preposition governs multiple nouns or each noun receives it’s own preposition. A good case in point is 1 John 5:6:

“Jesus Christ-He is the One who came by water and blood, not by water only, but by water and by blood.” 

We note that John twice combines the two objects water and blood together with kai, the first time with a single preposition and the second time repeating the preposition. This indicates that there is no distinction between these two constructions, unless one is ready to advocate for a change in meaning between the two phrases. Let’s look at another case:

“Finally the temple guards went back to the chief priests and the Pharisees, who asked them, ‘Why didn’t you bring him in?’ ” John 7:45

“So Judas came to the garden, guiding a detachment of soldiers and some officials from the chief priests and from the Pharisees.” John 18:3

In the first verse we have two nouns governed by a single preposition, and in the second verse the same two nouns are governed each by it’s own preposition, and this by the same author in the same book. Is there any theological significance to this? Does the author mean two different things by this? The answer is obviously not. One more example should suffice.

“And beginning from Moses and from all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.” Luke 24:27

“He said to them, ‘This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.’ “ Luke 24:44

Once again, from the same author and just seventeen verses apart, we see that the same two objects can be governed either by a single preposition or each by it’s own preposition. Is Luke trying to join Moses and the Prophets in a conceptual unity in the second verse, but conceiving of them separately in the first? Actually this shows that an author had freedom to repeat the preposition or not, without changing the meaning.

Davis, on page 8 of his article, speaks of Nigel Turner’s work in addressing this phenomenon, observing:

Turner is most helpful in describing the situation in biblical and nonbiblical Greek in stating that in both cases repetition and nonrepitition is common. He writes, “Both repetition and omission of the preposition before two or more phrases connected by kai, is found in Ptol. pap. and NT.” In nonbiblical Greek, Turner states that Polyb. [Polybius (II-III BC)] is “fond of repeating the preposition” but “by far the greater majority of instances in the Ptol. Papyri, especially in the unofficial style of writing, the preposition is not repeated.”

Davis’ own conclusion in his article throws light on this aspect of Greek syntax:

While not an exhaustive study, these examples should give one pause in assigning exegetical linkage or distinction when interpreting objects of prepositions based on single or multiple preposition constructions. Anyone who has seriously tried to translate the Old Testament into English has felt the tension between being faithful to the Hebrew or Aramaic text and the very unnatural English expression that can be created by strings of multiple prepositions. The decision to leave them all or omit some is usually due to translation philosophy and how much the natural English is strained. When omission is done it is not to create a special conceptual unity to communicate the same event or category but to express a concept in natural idiom. Even if a translator or author would have a native Semitic background he would probably want to the best of his ability get the text into natural form of the receptor language whatever it was. It is hoped that the raising of this red flag would spur further research and discussion to better understand how prepositions are used in the New Testament and what they do or do not communicate. As A.T. Robertson cautioned, freedom rather than rule seems to govern this aspect of Greek syntax.

In light of the above examples and the many more that could be shown, it is clear that this supposed “undeniable grammatical fact” is no such thing and is wide open for debate.

So if one does not presuppose the Lord Yeshua to be co-equal God with the Father, but holds to a simple human christology, and does not see the use of the single preposition as denoting absolute equality, how could the language of Paul’s salutations be understood? I would say that Paul has indeed paired together God our Father and the Lord Yeshua the Messiah in a way that creates a conceptual unity, but not as a single agent or even as two co-equal agents, but as primary and secondary agents. Just because Paul says that grace and peace come to us from God our Father and the Lord Yeshua, whether with the second preposition or not, does not entail that we understand them to be equal in every way. These things can come to us from God, as the primary source, through Yeshua, as the secondary source. In fact, this is the usual way that the NT authors spoke of how God’s blessings come to his people – they come from God through Yeshua the Messiah⁴. One relevant passage in this regard is John 1:17:

“For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”

Here we are told that the law was given to Israel through Moses, and that grace and truth came to Israel through Yeshua the Messiah. This presents both Moses and Yeshua as secondary agents, acting on behalf of God, who is the implied primary source. A comparison of these two agents of God is very instructive with regard to the language used of them in scripture. Such a comparison becomes even more pertinent if one considers the prophet of Deut. 18:17-19 to be referring to the Lord Yeshua, as at least the author of Acts does {Acts 3:222-26; 7:37}. If so, then Yeshua is an agent like Moses and we should expect to see similarities between the two, for example, they were both workers of wonders and they both heard from God and spoke his word to the people. But the similarity can further be seen in how their agency is described. Just like Yeshua, Moses’ role in the giving of the law to Israel is expressed in terms of secondary agency – see Ex. 31:18; Lev. 10:11; 26:46; Num. 31:21; Deut. 1:3; 6:1; Judg. 3:4; 1 Chron. 22:13; 2 Chron. 33:8; 34:14; Ezra 7:6; Neh. 8:14; 9:14; 10:29. But this did not prevent biblical authors from also expressing Moses’ role as if he were the primary source, even calling the law which God gave them the law of Moses – see Deut. 4:45; 33:4; Josh. 8:31-32; 23:6; 2 Kings 23:25; Dan. 9:11; Lk. 24:44; John 7:19, 23; Acts 15:5; Heb. 10:28.

In this same way, we can understand our Lord Yeshua to be the secondary source through whom the grace of God comes to us, even when scripture seems to speak of his agency in the language of a primary or co-primary source – see Matt. 1:21; Lk. 19:10; Jn. 2:19; 8:31; 11:25; 1 Cor. 16:23; Eph. 5:23; Phil. 3:20-21; 2 Thess. 2:16; 2Pet. 1:1b, 2; Jude 21; and of course, all of Paul’s salutations.

Endnotes

1. Rom. 1:7; 1 Cor. 1:3; 2 Cor. 1:2; Gal. 1:3; Eph. 1:2; Phil. 1:2; Col. 1:2b; 1 Thess. 1:1c; 2 Thess. 1:2; 1 Tim. 1:2b; 2 Tim. 1:2b; Titus 1:4b.
2. For an explanation and rebuttal of the Granville Sharp Rule see this article here.
3. Another passage which should cause consternation for trinitarian defenders is Rev. 1:4b-5a: “Grace to you and peace from the one who is , and who was, and who is to come, and from the seven spirits before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness.” Here we have a salutation from the author invoking grace and peace for the seven churches of Asia from God, the Father, the seven spirits before his throne, which most expositors take as a reference to the Holy Spirit, and Jesus Christ. Nearly all orthodox expositors see in this passage a clear reference to the Trinity, but it should be noted that each of the objects receives it’s own preposition. If Rogers wants to be consistent he would have to say that this passage makes a separation between the three objects, which according to orthodoxy are supposed to be co-equal.
4. In the NT, the blessings and gifts of God are said to come to us in, through or by Yeshua the Messiah. In these passages God, the Father, is the implied primary source, even if not explicitly stated: John 1:17; Rom. 3:24; 5:1, 11, 21; 6:23; 7:25; 8:39; 1 Cor. 1:2, 4; 15:22, 57; 2 Cor. 1:5, 20; 5:18-19; Gal. 3:14, 26; Eph. 1:3, 5; 2:10; 3:11; 4:32; Phil. 1:11; Col. 1:22; 2:10; 1 Thess. 5:9; 2 Tim. 1:1, 9; Titus 3:6; Heb. 13:21.