According to this passage found in the Bible, it appears the answer Jesus gave to the Jews shows that he isn't God, the Lord and Savior that Christians believe in.
John 7
13: Yet for fear of the Jews no one spoke openly of him.
14: About the middle of the feast Jesus went up into the temple and taught.
15: The Jews marveled at it, saying, "How is it that this man has learning, when he has never studied?"
16: So Jesus answered them, "My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me;
17: if any man's will is to do his will, he shall know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority.
18: He who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory; but he who seeks the glory of him who sent him is true, and in him there is no falsehood.
John is ambiguous about the status of Jesus, presenting him as both as equivalent to God and less than God.
John 10:30 I and the Father are one.
John 14:28 …for the Father is greater than I.
We can see this ambiguity already in the introductory passage.
The usual translation of John 1:1 runs like this:
John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
This is not quite what the Greek says.
Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος
In beginning was the Word
καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν
and the Word was with the God
καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος.
and god was the Word
In
koine Greek, when the referent was something definite and specific, a definite article was used. When the referent was not definite and specific, no article was provided.
Koine Greek had no indefinite articles.
τὸν θεόν is ‘the God’. In the New Testament scriptures, this form is used for the one and only God of Jewish and Christian monotheism. When the gods of other religions were meant, no article was provided. ‘The word was with God’ refers to the Jewish/Christian God by virtue of the definite article τὸν. But ‘The word was God’, the usual translation of the next clause, is not what the Greek says. The proper translation would be ‘a god was the word’, supplying the implied indefinite article as per normal translation practice.
What is this supposed to mean? The clue lies in the next verses.
John 1:2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.
The Word, ὁ λόγος = the Logos, is the term the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria uses for the quasi-divine entity that embodies the power of God in the world. More specifically, the Logos is responsible for the creation of all things and their continued coherence. Philo was attracted to the Platonic concept of God being totally pure and transcendent and therefore would never be directly involved in anything so mundane as creating the material world. In Platonism this is the job of the demiurge, an intermediate divine entity. Philo’s intermediary is the Logos, the Word of Gid whereby creation was accomplished. As Philo was Jewish and therefore a monotheist, he never called the Logos a separate divine entity. Sometimes in his writing the Logos is no different from God. Other times it is some kind of super angel, the first-born of God, that was begotten not made (sound familiar?) and was always with God from the beginning.
Philo also calls the Logos the Son of God, the phrase used by Paul in reference to Jesus. Colossians makes it clear that this is Philo’s creative intermediary.
Colossians 1
15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. 16 For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. 17 And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
The ambiguity John shows about the status of Jesus is the same ambiguity that arises in trying to understand Philo’s Logos. Is Jesus God or not God? Are Jesus and the Father one, or is the Father greater than Jesus?
