TEHILLIM 86

16 O turn unto me, and have mercy [be gracious] upon me; give thy strength [oz] unto thy servant [eved], and save the son of thine handmaid [ben amatecha].

We cannot better answer your question than by quoting from a private letter we addressed some time ago to a correspondent, in answer to a similar query. "My mind on the subject I express in a short paragraph among 'Answers to Correspondents,' in the coming (March) number of the Christadelphian.

I accept Dr. Thomas's teaching on the subject of God-manifestation, because I can see it to be the teaching of the word; but I do not understand that teaching to require me to regard the flesh and blood of Jesus as anything higher in nature than the flesh and blood of 'the children' he came to redeem.

Paul says it was the same (Heb. 2:14), and I believe it. It was in the first instance, drawn from the veins of Mary, during the nine months' gestatory process, in the same way as any other child; and was afterwards sustained like other men by the process of eating, except during the forty days he was in the wilderness, when like Moses for a similar period, he tasted no food, being upheld by the Spirit.

But then, underlying this was the Spirit. You rightly say the Spirit has to do with all men; but there is this great difference between Jesus and ordinary men, in this matter.

In the case of ordinary men they inherit a nature originally contrived by the Spirit, but not for a manifestation of the Spirit. The Spirit was the Creator, but the thing created (the living soul), partook no more of the quality, mind or tendency of the Spirit than any other animal fabrication.

Adam was a man simply, purely and merely, because the Spirit designed no higher result; and his descendants have not even the advantage he had in having a nature (earthy thought it be) directly from the hands of the Spirit.

In the case of Jesus the Spirit designed a manifestation of itself, through the medium of the flesh. Hence the babe born of Mary was the flesh-blossom, so to speak, of spirit seed.

The spirit was imparted to the human ovum, and the result was a man, who though the flesh and blood of his mother, was the manifestation in all his characteristics of the invisible power which overshadowed Mary and quickened her womb, and allied itself as it were with her substance.

The man Christ Jesus was not Spirit-nature. He was the Spirit manifested in flesh-nature—the divine glory concealed by the veil of the flesh.

Some call this two natures; but I think this is a wrong description of it.

These abstractions, however, should not trouble us. The main thing is to believe and receive the benefit, even if we do not understand, as in the case of the sun. Hoping we may be accounted worthy to be clothed upon with the house which is from heaven.—Your well-wisher,

Robert Roberts.

The Christadelphian, Apr 1872

...that there never was a time when the Father and his Spirit were not; but that until the birth of the babe in Bethlehem, that babe had no rudimental existence, save as Judah existed in the loins of Abraham, or Abraham in Adam; and therefore the babe in Adam from whom Luke traces its descent.

There was no Word made flesh until the birth of Mary's son, who in the Psalms is styled by the Spirit, "the Son of thine handmaid." The babe was created as Adam was created; the latter by the Spirit from the dust direct; the former by the Spirit from Mary's substance; and therefore from the dust indirectly.

These are facts testified to by the Word unmixed with superstitious inferences and speculations. Adam the First was created for reproduction; Adam the Second for God-Manifestation to the posterity of the first. There having been a time since the foundation of the world during which there was no God-manifestation through Adamic flesh, there was consequently a time when the Adamic Medium called Jesus was not.

In attentively considering Jesus, however, we know him only as Son of God and Mary. For thirty years he lived among men as a mechanic, working at his father-in-law's trade, being in favour with all his acquaintances, and without reproach. During all this time there was no manifestation of God through him. He cast out no demons, performed no miracles, and delivered no message to the people before his immersion in the Jordan, and the trial of his faith in his wilderness probation of forty days.

But when he had fulfilled the righteousness typified in the law in being immersed of John, the Spirit of the Father descended upon him in the form of a dove; and having driven him into the desert to be tempted of the Devil and brought him thence again approved, he began from that time to manifest himself to Israel as the El Shaddai who dealt with Abraham, and the Yahweh who by his angel talked with Moses in the bush.

From this the anointing of "the Holy One of Saints," the Spirit-manifester, the manifesting medium, and the manifested Father, concentred in Jesus. This being understood, the reader will know how to interpret the words "before Abraham was, I am," and many others of a similar description.

Herald of the Kingdom and Age to Come, June 1854

Jewish objections to Jesus considered

...the circumstances of the Jewish people now and for ages past, no longer admit of objection to Jesus, because of his humble, afflicted, and poverty-stricken condition, as contrasted with the nobility of the nation. Rulers and people have been trodden into the dust. The ignorant, superstitious, and cruel Gentiles have trampled them like mire in the streets. They are "a people scattered and peeled," humbled, persecuted, and, in most countries, miserably poor.

The despised Nazarene, though fed and clothed by the contributions of his friends, and without any certain habitation, or place to rest his head, was not so miserable, so enduringly wretched, as his countrymen in that same Jerusalem where he was put to death. A fraternity of woe has been established for ages between the Jews and Him who claims to be their King.

Hence, the national fortunes being changed, the case is changed. An objection to him now is, in the words of Mr. Isaac Leeser, that "an only son of God could not exist by any possibility. We reject the idea," says he,

"of God's parting with any part of himself to constitute a personage to whom the name of his son could with any propriety be applied. We do not recognize any division in the Godhead."

This objection has grown out of the crude and vain speculations of Athanasius. But the New Testament nowhere teaches a division of the το θειον, to Theion, or Divine Nature. Paul taught "one Lord," that is, Jesus Christ; and "one God," who is "the Father of all, above all, through all, and in all:" so that he styles him,

"the Father of our Lord Jesus the Messiah,"

and the Father of the children, both Jews and Gentiles, whom he gives to Jesus to be his brethren. He dwelt in Jesus by his Holy Spirit, as he will hereafter dwell in all his brethren, that he may be all things in all. He did not "part with any part of himself" in the begettal of Jesus, any more than in the begettal of Adam, who is styled "Son of God," as well as Jesus.

The difference between Adam and Jesus in the origin of their humanity is, that God formed Adam by his Spirit out of the dust, while he formed Jesus by the same Spirit out of the substance of David's daughter, who is styled in the Psalms, Yahweh's handmaid, and her offspring, "the Son of thine handmaid, " which is equivalent to "Son of God." He is Son of God also by his begettal from death to life as His firstborn from the dead; as it is written in the second psalm, "Yahweh ahmar aly, Beni ahtah ani hyyom yelidtikah"—

"Yahweh hath said to me, My Son thou art; I this day have begotten thee;"

i. e., the day of his resurrection. The particles of the Greek New Testament rendered as they ought to be, make the expressions of Paul concerning Jesus in perfect harmony with what is affirmed concerning the Lord Jesus in all passages of the Old Testament.

Hence, the Jewish objection to Jesus derived from Athanasian foolishness, is as baseless as its origin. The New Testament and the Old altogether agree as to the nature of the relationship subsisting between Yahweh and his Messiah, as the Father and the Son.

Herald of the Kingdom and Age to Come, Jan 1853