Trinitarian confusion at Romans 9:5

[cjab]

If they are intrinsically invalid, why do you bother using them? I don't know why you are championing them, or why you decided to truncate his comment to avoid his charge against John. Julian clearly understood that John was calling Christ "God," but that wasn't convenient for you.

John doesn't call Christ "God". He calls the Logos "God". There is a crucial distinction: the Christ was a "man" and in the form of man, even if spiritually he possessed the divine nature (the two are compatible). The Logos however was in the plenary form of God (invisible and all powerful).

This is the problem with Julian's argument. It's not a valid, just because John doesn't call the begotten (human) son "God."

Even your source, Julian is against you and clearly recognized that John was speaking of Christ as "God." I don't see how you get this sort of statement based on the scriptures, and it doesn't help that you are appealing to a sophist attack on Christianity by a pagan apostate of Arian Christianity.

That's what the Trinitarians were fixated on in the days of Julian: labelling Christ as God. Hence "theokotos." The problem conceptually is then that you then have two Gods, one on earth and one in heaven. Even Julian could see that was not what the Jews believed, and that Christianity had in accepting it deviated from Jewish monotheism. Surprisingly this didn't seem to worry the Christians in those days, just as it doesn't worry you.

And yet the Christians were put to work to explain how it was that the allegedly Christian Roman Empire had more enemies and less peace in the 5th century than ever before. cf. Paulus Orosius, Contra Paganos &etc. Clearly the Christians had a tough time trying to convince the Arian Vandals that their religion was better. Wouldn't it be true to say that the Orthodox could have been well nigh exterminated, had the Arian Goths and Vandals been so predisposed?

"The Word" is a name of Christ, which was clear from John more than a decade before he wrote his gospel (see Revelation 19:13). John also says "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God.

Christ the savior is Christ the mediator, and he was definely a man: 1Ti 2:5.

...in contradistion to the Word, which performed no mediatorial role, but rather "was God."

All things were made by him, and without him nothing was made that was made . . . and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory--the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." Christ is the Word and is the Son of God. He was with the Father before the world began (John 17:5), returned to heaven "where he was before" at the ascension (Cf. John 6:62) and it was by him that all things were created (John 1:1-3, Colossians 1:16-18).

Sure the Word became Christ and became the Word again. However, you're overlooking a salient point: he who isn't in the form of God shouldn't claim to be God, even if he came from God (except in the descriptive agency role per John 10:30 et seq.). Moreover "God is Spirit" and "God is invisible." You're breaking every rule in the theological rule book where you talk as if Christ was some pagan God, going to and fro between earth and heaven.

Acts 20:28, "feed the church of God, which he has purchased with his own blood."
Colossians 2:9, 1"for in him dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily"
Philippians 2:7, 8, ἐν ὁμοιώματι ἀνθρώπων γενόμενος·

So he became a man.....

καί σχήματι εὑρεθείς ὥς ἄνθρωπος ἐταπείνωσεν ἑαυτὸν γενόμενος ὑπήκοος μέχρι θανάτου

And was obligated to behave like a man being found in the appearance of a man (even though from God).

So now the Word was "a god"?

Not a god (such is pagan concept in English), but a "man".