Page 83 - Bible Writers Theology Original

nizes that the kind of information about Jesus that theology has so often locked to New Testament scholars to provide is not available." John Bowden concludes Ins article entitled "Jesus" in "A New Dictionary of Christian Theology" with these iDords:
There is a good deal that we probably do know about Jesus; the trouble is that we cannot always be sure precisely what it is. Because of the very nature ofhistorical research, discussions about Jesus always contain countless approximations, and one ofthe most confident recent studies (A.E. Harvey, Jesus and the Constraints of History, 1982) concedes that "it can still be argued that we can have no reliable hisr torical knowledge about Jesus with regard to anything that really matters" (p 6). This being so, it is remarkable that attempts to restate the significance ofJesus with out the doctrine of Incarnation can be based on very little historical evidence. However Christology may be worked out, there is no escaping our considerable igno ranceabout actualfacts.
Why, we may legitimately ask, is there such skepticism regarding the acquisition ofsignificantfactual information about the Jesus ofhistory? Why does one so often hear itsaid today that the only Jesus we can now recover by New Testament research is the non-historical "created" Jesus of the early church's Kri^vypa ("proclama tion").Tounderstandallofthis, itisnecessarytogiveabriefoverviewofthemeth ods dominating twentieth-century New Testament Gospel research."
The impression left by such statements in the mind ofconcerned readers is simi lar to the one predicted by prophecies like Isaiah 29:9-14 which could stand as a rel evant witness to the theological confusion prevailing in modern theological drcles (Reymond, 28).
4.8 God the Father in Christ
Without doubt, the deity has from eternity been one in entity, character/ and being, never two or three. But in the New Testament, He has manifest ed Himself to His people as the invisible Father (Spirit), in the visible Son (flesh), and by His own life-giving breath: the Spirit of God in the hearts ot believers. Theconscienceofeveryhumanbeingwitnessesthattheoneand only God has existed from eternity in full divine essence, that He will con tinue to exist forever, and that there is no other God beside Him. This one ness truth has been confirmed by God's own testimony (Isaiah 44:24).
God the Father is at the same time Word and Spirit. He accomplishes cr^ ation by His Word, and by His own breath He gives life to creation (fob 32;o/ 33:4; Psalm 33:5-6; John 1:1-3). Divinity does not beget divinities, nor does God reproduce himself into several gods. There remains one divine essence from eternity to eternity (Exodus 15:11; Isaiah 9:6; 44:6-8; 45:5-7; 48:1^' Hebrews 13:8). Some wrongly believe that the Word of God is a second divine person that owes his existence to the Father.
To avoid the nrusconception of a plurality in the Godhead, God through Isaiah, "\, even I, am the LORD; and beside me there is no Saviour
The Oneness of God ♦ 67