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but the "man Messiah," the unique mediator be- mother's womb (see Matt. 1:18, 20, "begotten";
tween the One God, his Father, and mankind (I Luke 1:35).
Tim. 2:5). Such is the most fundamental of all
biblical truths, and it provides a guide to the With the new philosophically conceived model of
whole divine story encompassed by Scripture. the universe, Jesus was no longer the human
Psalm 110:1 should be pondered and understood Messiah. An imaginative, fictional "halo" was
at all costs. Christians should verify these facts added to him, and he ceased to be the man
and be prepared to share them with others. Messiah, the promised descendant of David, the
prophet to arise in the House of Israel as brother
How then was this precious truth about the iden- to Israel. Moses had declared expressly that the
tity and relationship of God and the Messiah Messiah would not be the God of Israel! (Deut.
eclipsed? The culprit is Greek philosophy, 18:15-18; Acts 3:22; 7:37 make the point unmis-
blended -- no doubt in the interests of being takably -- the Messiah cannot possibly be God.)
"ecumenical" -- with the unique Hebrew-based
faith of Jesus and the Apostles. Christian Bible readers need this most fundamen-
tal insight -- that Jesus was truly a man, not, as
It was the Greek intellectuals who surmised that the official creeds say, most philosophically and
there was an ultimate God who was far too re- confusingly, "man," but not " a man." Did you
moved from the world to have created it (He know that your Trinitarian church (and most of
could not sully his hands with "wicked" matter!). the Churches of God) is committed officially to
So then, there must be a "second god," who per- the belief that Jesus was "man" but not "a man"?
formed the actual creation of the world. From the The matter deserves careful investigation.
second century AD, from the school of philo-
sophically trained "church fathers" there emerged -- Anthony Buzzard.
the idea that the Son of God must be that preex-
isting creator of the world. It is not by chance that
the leading neo-Platonist of the second century,
Numenius, uses exactly the same language as the
church father (ostensibly teaching the Bible) Justin
Martyr. Both speak of "another God," a non-
human intermediary between the ultimate, distant
God and the world.

With this theory, the shape of Christianity was
permanently altered. Furthermore, the results
were later forced upon the believers. With this
view of the cosmos, Jesus was for the first time
presented as preexisting as "another God" (the
language of Justin Martyr). If this were so, then
he could no longer be the Son of God who came
into existence for the first and only time in his

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