Doesn’t sending prove two persons?
The Objection Lab · Objection III of X
Doesn’t sending prove two persons?
Stated first the way its strongest advocate states it. Then your turn.
“The Father sent the Son, and you can’t send yourself, so the Son must be a distinct person who existed before He was sent.”8 verses answer it
I · The steelman
Their case, at full strength
“The Father sent the Son, and you can’t send yourself, so the Son must be a distinct person who existed before He was sent.”
Sending requires two: one who sends and one who is sent, and both exist before the sending. Scripture uses exactly that language. “God sent forth his Son” (Gal 4:4). “God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world” (John 3:17). The Son says, “I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world” (John 16:28), and “I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me” (John 6:38). He was not made in Bethlehem and then commissioned. He came into the world from the Father.
Nor does being sent make the Son lesser. Trinitarians distinguish the Son’s equality of nature from the order of His mission: the sending in time reveals the Son’s eternal relation to the Father, without making Him any less divine.
II · Drill it
Answer it. Ninety seconds.
Write what you would say if you heard this tonight. The clock starts with your first word; the ring is only a guide.
0 words
Read further
- Ten Objections to Oneness, Answered · this objection in the essay
- Oneness Theology: A Working Compendium
A short but complete map of Oneness theology: the one God of Israel, manifested in flesh as Jesus Christ. It works through the Hebrew and Greek of the key Old and New Testament texts, the typology of the angel, the tabernacle and the priesthood, and the apostolic practice of baptism in Jesus’ name. Each contested text is set beside the strongest Trinitarian reading before it is answered.