"You don't find Jewish circles in the first century teaching that the memra was another person..." In fact, Benjamin Sommer, a conservative Jewish scholar, of JTS said as much. But, that's neither here nor there. My statement said nothing about the Jews seeing the memra was another person who is God. I said "ὁ λόγος of God was God's mouthpiece, the voice of God" be it spoken by a prophet, angel or whatnot.
I don't need to make the voice of God into another person. The text does that by saying ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν.
Question: why is your default personal analogies? We are not talking about things on the human level. We are talking about the divine. Quote a verse, or deal with a verse. That's all the ammo you've got. Human analogies automatically don't apply because God is not human.
"The Logos is a functional distinction, not a literal second person..." This is an unjustified assertion of dogma. It's use in a debate is an admission that you don't have a reason to believe what you believe. I believe ὁ λόγος is a distinct person from the Father because John wrote, ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν. Those words in this order demand the reader see ὁ λόγος as another person with the Father. And, this perspective is only reenforced by continuing to read: θεὸν οὐδεὶς ἑώρακεν πώποτε μονογενὴς θεὸς ὁ ὢν εἰς τὸν κόλπον τοῦπατρὸς ἐκεῖνος ἐξηγήσατο or "No one has ever seen God, the unique God, who is at the side of the Father, he has made him known." The text continues by explaining how people saw God throughout the OT when no one saw the Father by saying they always saw ὁ λόγος, who is God and next to God at the same time in different ways.
BTW, Benjamin D Sommer said that no Jew faithful to Scripture and Tradition should have any problem with the Trinity citing examples of similar teachings among Jews prior to and during the life of Christ found in Jewish sources. This isn't the opinion of some guy on the internet. This is a major scholar who isn't a Trinitarian saying it's illegitimate to attack Christians for the Trinity given Jewish sources and Scripture.
In other words, you bible study method is to take your theological, and fully unjustified, definition for Logos and cram it into the text to quote "harmonize" it with how you theologically read other passages. Again, no one is rejecting monotheism here, so referencing Isaiah 45:5 has no application in this discussion. You are just accusing us of rejecting Isaiah 45:5 without any justification as to present as default your unjustified theological twisting of the text.
FYI, I've presented many strong and plain scriptures with no bizarre shadows of meaning justifying the three persons of the Trinity without any contradiction to concepts of echad, elohim, memra, logos. You just refuse to even consider them in light of your theological training/blinding. There is no twisting going on in John 1:1, 14:16-17; 17:5; Psalm 110:1; Matthew 22:44; Mark 12:36; Luke 20:42-43; Acts 2:34-35; Daniel 7:9-14; Revelation 5; Genesis 1:26; etc. etc. etc. Just clear statements of facts distingishing two(or three) personally, who are God, before Jesus' birth, during Jesus' ministry, and after his resurrection.
Rogue teacher? He is a well respected scholar from a well respected Jewish Seminary. You are simply expressing your hubris by dismissing him like this. It must hurt to learn one of your best excuses for rejecting the Trinity is false.
God Bless
You are making WAY too much out of Sommer's and your view of the Memra. I'm not sure if you are just begging for support for your position by grasping unto a one-off Jewish scholar or if you actually believe that mainstream Jewish scholars hold to the same position as Sommers.
Of course, you reject Isaiah 45:5 and other scriptures like it. God's name here is singular, he uses singular pronouns, and he says there is none else. The lunacy in which you handle pronouns is equivalent to the lunacy of the transgender pronoun nonsense. Check back into reality please and accept what singular pronouns mean. You're playing games with pronouns.
The pronoun ME doesn't mean three persons. This is not hard.
As the great Apostle warned in Colossians 2:8, the Trinity is high sounding nonsense.
Three eternally co-equal persons who are each God and love one another is a total contradiction to Isaiah 45:5 and other scriptures like it.
Is there Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? Yes. Three persons? No
There is the one true God (HE, I AM, NONE BESIDE ME), is the Father. This One God, who is transcendent, expressed His word in creation and ultimately by becoming flesh, a genuine man called the Son of God. Because the Son of God was an authentic man, He related back to God the Father as other men do. He was the I AM manifested in the flesh but due to His human existence, He related back to God from His genuine human perspective.
The Trinitarian view is you start with 3 eternal persons and each person relates to the other two persons and does his own manifesting, etc.
It is a many (WE ARE) to one (I AM ONE OF THREE BESIDES ME). Clearly unbiblical and nonsensical pronoun problems.
The Oneness view is I start with 1 eternal God and this one eternal God manifests Himself in many ways.
It is One (I AM) to many manifestations (EACH IS I AM). Clearly biblical and no pronoun problems.