Because of its Christological and anthropological
implications, subordinationists typically deny that the Son of God resurrected
himself. Instead, they appeal to NT passages that assert that the Father was alone
in bringing about the resurrection (e.g., Acts 2:24). John 2:18-22 has been a
classic locus for the orthodox contention that Jesus resurrected himself. That
is, not in isolation from the Father and the Holy Spirit. Rather, like creation
itself, the resurrection of Christ was a Triune work.
In John 2:19
Jesus said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” John
noted that Jesus was metaphorically referring to the “temple of his body" (v. 21). The
verb translated “raise” is ἐγερῶ, the future active first person of ἐγείρω; a
term which is defined as “to wake.”[1]
Jesus uses this term metaphorically as a reference for his resurrection in conjunction
with λύω, a circumlocution for death. Three days after his interlocutors would
kill him, Jesus would raise the temple of his body. Here, Jesus explicitly claims
responsibility for his future resurrection.
Despite his
clarity, subordinationists insist that Jesus was not claiming responsibility
for his resurrection. A case in point is the comments made by Carlos Xavier: “
In John 2.19 Jesus did not say, “I will raise myself up.” The word
translated “raise” [egeiro] simply means to get up or to wake up. So when we
normally speak of someone waking up from sleep, we have no problem. But because
the context here has to do with the resurrection, many in the Jesus-is-God
movement have tried to use it as some sort of “proof text.” This view is
propagated by the Orthodox teaching of the immortal soul that clearly
contradicts the biblical view of the state of the dead as total inactivity in
the grave.[2]
Xavier recognizes the implications, at least in part, of Jesus’
claim. If Jesus raised himself, anthropological monism is necessarily untrue. Given
that the historic Christian faith has affirmed the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ
as one of its central tenets, Xavier’s quaint characterization (i.e., “the
Jesus-is-God movement”) is akin to calling the United States the “freedom
movement.” Unfortunately, Xavier has employed a common subordinationist tactic: obscuring Jesus’ statement by relegating it to the opaque veil of a figurative speech:
The fact is that the immediate language in John 2 is figurative
since Jesus was comparing his body with the temple and spoke of it in the third
person. The point is Jesus [sic] resurrection from the dead as a sign to
his unbelieving fellow Israelites, not how it would happen.”[3]
This is a betrayal of an explicit statement and a false dilemma.
Jesus’ statement indicates both that his resurrection would occur and that he
would bring it to pass. Xavier added:
Note that John
did not go on to say “So when Jesus raised himself from the dead” but “when he
was raised from the dead,” i.e., by God. This is typical resurrection language
for Jesus throughout the rest of the NT.[4]
Xavier has pitted
Jesus’ statement (i.e., “I will raise it”) against v. 22 (“he was raised from
the dead”), arguing that the aorist passive ἠγέρθη requires another actor,
namely God, to have accomplished the resurrection. However, because ἠγέρθη only
takes a prepositional object (i.e., “from the dead”) it is intransitive,
especially given its complement in v. 19.[5] The
grammatical passivity is owed not to a “divine passive” and the like,
but is active in meaning (cf. John 10:17).[6]
While it is common
for subordinationist writers such as Carlos Xavier to obscure the plain
statements of Scripture, their arguments, upon closer scrutiny, are bald eisegesis. Perhaps this is why the Jesus-is-not-God movement, in all of its iterations, remains a small fringe minority in comparison with the historic Christian
church.
[1] BDAG, 271.
[2] Carlos Xavier,
n.d. “Did Jesus Raise Himself From the Dead?,” The Human Messiah Jesus, http://thehumanjesus.org/2019/07/31/did-jesus-raise-himself-from-the-dead/.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] A. T. Robertson,
A Grammar of the Greek New Testament in the Light of Historical Research
(Nashville, TN: B & H, 1934), 817.
[6]
J. Ramsey Michaels, The Gospel of John, The New International Commentary
on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 2010), 168. Cf. George R. Beasley-Murray, John, Word Biblical Commentary (Waco, TX: Word Books, 1987), 38.