Rabbi Jonathan Blass taught the following: “The Christian doctrine of the Trinity is ideologically idolatrous. Any doctrine that teaches that God is or was a human being or can take any other limited, worldly, created form is idolatrous by definition.” (1)
While we have previously addressed Jewish opposition to the divinity of Christ, Rabbi Blass has something else in view: the supposed scandal that God became a man. (2)
Sometimes people will cite a verse in the Torah to support this, Numbers 23:19:
Numbers 23:19
God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it?
There is a similar verse in 1 Samuel 15:29:
1 Samuel 15:29
“And also the Strength of Israel will not lie nor repent: for he is not a man, that he should repent.”
Some rabbis may also point to Maimonides’ defense of the spirituality of God. He wrote in his introduction to Perek Chelek about what he terms the “third fundamental principle” of Judaism.
“We are to believe that he is incorporeal, that His unity is physical neither potentially nor actually. None of the attributes of matter can be predicated of Him, neither motion, nor rest for example. They cannot refer to Him accidentally or essentially. That is why our sages denied Him composition and separation, and said : “On high there is neither sitting nor standing, neither want nor weariness” (Hagigah 15a), i.e., neither composition nor separation, and said: “On High there is neither sitting nor standing, neither want nor weariness” (Hagigah 15a), i.e., neither composition nor separation, as the Biblical usage of these words attests. The prophet asked: in Isaiah 40:18
Isaiah 40:18
To whom can you compare God, whom might he resemble?
If He were a body, He would be like other bodies. Whenever Scripture describes Him in corporeal terms like walking, standing, sitting, speaking, and the like, it speaks metaphorically. Thus our sages said: “The Torah speaks in human language” (Berakhot 31b). This third fundamental principle is taught in the Biblical verse: in Deuteronomy 4:15
This verse means to say, one cannot conceive of Him as one would a Baal image, since, as we have shown, He has no body at all, actually or potentially.”
Some rabbis will seize upon this argumentation to claim the following:
God is without a body
Jesus had a body
Therefore Jesus is not God
All of this follows the original objection of some of the Jewish leaders to Jesus, recorded in John 10:33:
John 10:33
“The Jews answered him, saying, For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God.”
This form of reasoning fails to take crucial distinctions on board. It is true that God is in essence spiritual. However, Jesus’ taking upon himself a human body in no way suggests a change in God. We read in Psalm 40 that the Father prepared a body for Jesus, with mention made of the ears of that body:
He would suffer in that nature, so the Lord says in Zechariah 12:10:
Zechariah 12:10
And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn.
We see from this Jesus is distinct from the Father as a separate person, yet he is the same as his Father in essence.
That God is a Spirit is affirmed in the gospel of John in the New Testament (John 4:24):
The New Testament also affirms that there is no change in God in James 1:17:
James 1:17
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.
The distinction between Jesus and the Father is relational: Jesus is the Son of the Father, and the Father begat Jesus the Son – and both breathe out the Holy Spirit. This is not a biological generation as one might generate a child, but from eternity. Jesus in his Sonship could also take upon himself a body prepared for him by his Father.
This is not a doctrine Christians have invented, but rather we see in the Hebrew Bible of the Old Testament itself. Psalm 2:7 reads:
Psalm 2:7
I will declare the decree: the Lord hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee.
Thus Jesus – a divine person with a divine nature – took on a human nature, and in his incarnation was fully man and fully God. Thus Jesus’ humanity should be distinguished from his divinity, and thus Jesus’ having a body in no way diminishes from the spirituality of God.
We see that the Messiah has a divine nature and is God himself in other verses such as Micah 5:2:
Micah 5:2
But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.
Humans are not from everlasting, yet God is. If the Messiah is from everlasting then he is God. Christ Jesus is from everlasting, described in John 1:14
Although it has hard for the human mind to fathom, Christ’s divinity is such that he was in heaven as God, while simultaneously being on earth, as we read in John 3:14:
John 3:14
And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven.
Indeed, we see it was God’s plan all along to send his Son Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity, to be the Mediator between God and man.
The objection that Christianity is idolatry therefore amounts to a strawman.
As Jesus himself replied to the Jews in John 10:36-38:
John 10:36-38
Say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God? If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not. But if I do, though ye believe not me, believe the works: that ye may know, and believe, that the Father is in me, and I in him.
Jesus did the works of his Father so that we may know that Jehovah the Father, has provided salvation by sending Jehovah the Son – Jesus Christ – to save us by his grace from his wrath and the due penalty for our sins.
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