CHRIST: THE FATHER’S CO-CREATOR
The following excerpt is taken from the monumental work titled The Incarnate Christ and His Critics: A Biblical Defense, authored by Robert M. Bowman Jr. & J. Ed Komoszewski, published by Kregel Academic, Grand Rapids, MI, 2024, Part 4: Doing What Only God Does: Jesus’ Divine Deeds, Chapter 32: The Son as Maker and Sustainer of All Things, pp. 612-623.
In my estimation this is THE best and most comprehensive exposition and defense of the biblical basis for the Deity of Christ. Every serious Trinitarian Christian student of the Holy Bible, apologist, and/or theologian must have this book in the library. All emphasis will be mine.
“IN HIM ALL THINGS WERE CREATED” (COLOSSIANS 1:16)
Colossians 1 presents a theologically rich confession of Christ as the maker and sustainer of all things:
The Father rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation, for in him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, things seen and unseen, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and all things hold together in him. (Col. 1:13–17 EHV)
In this passage, Paul undeniably uses the specific language of creation: “. . . the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth . . .” (Col. 1:15–16 NIV). Note the following four elements in this short span of text:
• A reference to “all creation” (1:15)
• An immediately following use of the verb “were created” (ektisthē)
• The conventional expression “all things” (ta panta) standard in Hellenistic Jewish usage for the entirety of creation
• The stock Old Testament way of referring to the created world as encompassing both heaven and earth (starting of course in Gen. 1:1; see Exod. 20:11; Neh. 9:6; Ps. 115:15; Prov. 3:19; Isa. 37:16; Zech. 12:1; also Acts 4:24; Rev. 14:7)
Any one of these four elements in another context might have a different reference; however, integrated into one statement, they can plausibly be understood only to refer to the original creation of the world. James Dunn, who on other grounds argues against Christ’s preexistence in this passage, agrees that ta panta here denotes “everything, the universe, the totality of created entities . . . including, as the appended phrases make clear, everything within that totality.”36
Colossians 1 speaks not just of the Son’s role in the initial creation but also of his sustaining all things: “in him all things hold together” (1:17). The word translated “hold together” (sunestēken, a perfect active indicative form of sunistēmi) is one of several words that C. John Collins has shown were used more or less interchangeably in ancient Greek philosophy and in Hellenistic Jewish texts to express the idea that the cosmos was held together by God, the Logos, or Wisdom.37 The first-century BC work De Mundo said that “all things [panta] are from God and hold together [sunestēken] for us through God” (397b, 14–15).38 Although De Mundo espoused a pagan view of the divine, the obvious similarity of this statement to Colossians 1:17b (even using the same form of the verb) is instructive for understanding what the word meant in this sort of “cosmic” context. Likewise, in the first century AD, the Jewish philosopher Philo wrote that nothing can “hold together” (sustēnai, the aorist active infinitive form of sunistēmi) apart from God (Mos. 2.132; see also Josephus, Ant. 12.22).
Similar statements using synonymous verbs occur in Jewish wisdom literature. Sirach (second century BC) says that “by his word all things hold together [sugkeitai ta panta]” (Sir. 43:26 NRSV). The phrase “by his word” translates en logō autou, literally “in his word,” making the parallel to Colossians 1:17b (“in him,” en autō) all the more striking. Wisdom (first century BC), also called the Wisdom of Solomon, states:
For wisdom is a kindly spirit,
but it will not free blasphemers from the guilt of their words . . .
the spirit of the Lord has filled the world
and that which holds all things together [to sunechon ta panta]
knows what is said. (Wis. 1:6–7 NRSV)
The words “that which holds together” (to sunechon) likely refer to “the spirit [pneuma] of the Lord,” since both expressions are grammatically neuter, rather than to “wisdom,” which in Greek is a feminine noun (sophia). Yet wisdom and spirit are intimately connected here; indeed, wisdom is called a “spirit” in the immediate context. Jewish texts could speak of God, his word, his wisdom, or his spirit “holding together” the universe (“all things”). In Colossians 1:17b, Paul credits the Father’s “beloved Son” (1:12–13) with this divine work of holding all things together. What Hellenistic Jewish thinkers said about God’s word or wisdom (generally thought of as an aspect of God’s own being), Paul says directly and explicitly about a person, God’s Son.
As in Romans 11:36 and 1 Corinthians 8:6, in Colossians 1:16 Paul employs the prepositional metaphysic language he picked up from Hellenistic Jewish adaptation of Greek philosophical discourse: “In him [en autō] all things were created . . . all things have been created through him [di’ autou] and for him [eis auton]” (Col. 1:16 NIV). As in Romans 11:36, Paul speaks of “all things” (ta panta) and uses three prepositional phrases with the personal pronoun, and two of these are identical to those in Romans 11:36 (di’ autou . . . eis auton). Yet here the person credited with these divine roles in making and sustaining all things is the Father’s beloved Son. We should interpret these two prepositional phrases in Colossians 1:16 to have the same meaning as in Romans 11:36, that he is the agent and goal of all creation:
| Romans 11:36 | Colossians 1:16 |
| For from him [ex autou] and through him [di’ autou] and for him [eis auton] all things [ta panta] | In him [en autō] all things [ta panta] were created . . . all things [ta panta] were created through him [di’ autou] and for him [eis autou] |
Paul also says that all things were created “in him,” that is, in the Son. Commentators have offered a variety of explanations of the phrase en autō, which occurs three times in quick succession in this passage (Col. 1:16, 17, 19). In the immediate context, this phrase parallels Paul’s frequent expression “in Christ” (and equivalents), which typically conveys the idea of dependence on Christ for salvation (Col. 1:2, 4, 14, 28; 2:3, 6–7, 10–12). We might also compare Colossians 1:16 with another threefold description of God as Creator and Sustainer, this one in Paul’s speech in Athens: “In him [en autō] we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).
What Paul says about Christ as the preexistent agent (Col. 1:16) and present sustainer (1:17) of creation is difficult to explain away. In his commentary on Colossians, James Dunn expresses as well as anyone the most common theory to circumvent the conclusion that Paul regarded Christ as eternal deity. Regarding verse 16, he writes:
What does such language mean when applied to Messiah Jesus? Not, presumably, that the Christ known to his followers during his ministry in Palestine was as such God’s agent in creation; in the first century no less than the twentieth that would be to read imaginative metaphor in a pedantically literal way. It must mean rather that that powerful action of God, expressed by the metaphor of the female Wisdom, in and through whom the universe came into being, is now to be seen as embodied in Christ, its character now made clear by the light of his cross and resurrection (1:18, 20).39
Dunn’s argument here is question-begging in the extreme, as such language as “presumably” and “it must mean” lets slip. The whole point of the New Testament is that “the Christ known to his followers during his ministry in Palestine” turned out to be much more than they had known at that time. The Gospels themselves make this point repeatedly, as does Paul himself (2 Cor. 5:16). The historic, traditional Christian reading of Colossians 1 and of the other passages we are discussing here is not “pedantically literal,” since that reading fully recognizes the use of such metaphorical language as “firstborn” and “head of the body” (Col. 1:15, 18). Paul could easily have said something like what Dunn claims he meant, but he did not. The term “wisdom” does not even appear in the passage. Paul does use the word elsewhere in the epistle, but never in a cosmic or creational sense (1:9, 28; 2:3, 23; 3:16; 4:5). Nor does he use it in such a sense in any of its other twenty-two occurrences in his epistles (Rom. 11:33; 1 Cor. 1:17–2:13; 3:19; 12:8; 2 Cor. 1:12; Eph. 1:8, 17; 3:10).
Dunn labors especially hard to account for the statement that “in him all things hold together” (Col. 1:17). He frames the problem as a choice between two extreme ways of reading the text: “This is not the language of clinical analysis but of poetic imagination,”40 and since it cannot be the former (which no one claims) it must be the latter. Dunn reasons that the statement affirms that “the wisdom which holds the universe together is most clearly to be recognized in its distinctive character by reference to Christ.” He concludes that Paul means “that the fundamental rationale of the world is ‘caught’ more in the generous outpouring of sacrificial, redemptive love (1:14) than in the greed and grasping more characteristic of ‘the authority of darkness (1:12).”41 It’s a nice thought, but it’s not a plausible interpretation of what “in him all things hold together” means. Had Paul said that in God “all things hold together,” no one would question that Paul credited God with providing the stable order and coherence of the cosmos. What shocks many people to this day is that Paul says this about Jesus.
“ALL THINGS CAME INTO BEING THROUGH HIM” (JOHN 1:3)
John’s prologue not only calls Christ “God” (John 1:1, 18), it contains two explicit affirmations of Christ’s role in creation:
All things [panta] came into being through Him [di’ autou], and apart from Him not even one thing came into being that has come into being. In Him [en autō] was life, and the life was the Light of mankind. And the Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not grasp it.
. . . He was in the world, and the world came into being through Him [di’ autou], and yet the world did not know him. (John 1:3–5, 10 NASB)
Interestingly, John uses two of the three prepositional phrases found in Colossians 1:16 (“through him” and “in him”). Evidently such prepositional metaphysics very quickly became stock ways of expressing Christ’s relation to the universe as its maker and sustainer.
Most English versions reflect the traditional interpretation of John 1:3, whether they say that all things “came into being” (CEB, LEB, NASB, NJB, NRSV), “were made” (ESV, NIV, NKJV), or “were created” (CSB, NET). Nearly all commentators and other scholars agree with this interpretation. The most notable exception is John Ashton, a Johannine scholar who argues that the Greek verb egeneto does not mean “were made” or “were created” and should be translated “happened” or “came to pass.” Ashton also points out that John uses the word panta without the article, rather than ta panta, the usual wording when referring to creation as “all things.” He acknowledges that the opening words of John 1:1, “In the beginning” (en archē), allude to Genesis 1:1, but he maintains this is the only allusion to Genesis 1, and therefore an insufficient basis for reading John 1:3 as referring to creation. Combining this exegesis with an impersonal interpretation of the Logos, Ashton paraphrases John 1:3–4 as follows:
From the very beginning God held his thought (the Logos) close to him, and his thought was a facet of his divinity. All human history, every single thing that has ever happened, took place through the mediation of the Logos, but what has come about in the Logos (that is, the special events of God’s intervention on behalf of his people), this was life, a life that it was God’s prerogative to bestow, a life that was also light—illumination and revelation.42
Ashton’s arguments may offer some valid qualifications to the standard interpretation of John 1:3, but they do not overturn it. As Ashton himself acknowledges,43 the statement just a few verses later that “the world came into being [egeneto] through Him” (1:10 NASB) must refer to or at least include the original creation. Moreover, contrary to Ashton’s claim, there are multiple allusions in John 1:1–5 to Genesis 1:1–5:
• The opening words of the two books are the same, “In the beginning” (en archē, Gen. 1:1 LXX; John 1:1).
• Both texts repeatedly use the same common divine title “God” (theos, six times in Gen. 1:1–5; three times in John 1:1–2).
• The term “Word” (ho logos, John 1:1, 14) alludes to God speaking to perform his creative acts (Gen. 1:3, etc.), an allusion made explicit in later texts, e.g., “By the word [tō logō] of the Lord the heavens were made firm. . . . Because it was he that spoke, and they came to be [egenēthēsan]” (Ps. 32:6a, 9a NETS [33:6a, 9a]; see also 2 Peter 3:5).
• The verb egeneto occurs repeatedly in Genesis 1, including in the first of those creative acts: “And God said, ‘Let light come into being [genēthētō].’44 And light came into being [egeneto]” (Gen. 1:3 LES). Although the other occurrences of egeneto in Genesis 1 LXX have a different sense (especially in the refrain “and there was [egeneto] evening and there was [egeneto] morning”), in Genesis 1:3 the verb clearly denotes creation. Moreover, the passage ends (or the next major unit begins) with the word again denoting creation: “This is the book of the origin of the heavens and the earth, when they came into being [egeneto], on the day when the Lord God made the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 2:4 LES; cf. Ps. 32:9a quoted above).
• Both passages draw a sharp contrast between “the light,” to phōs, and “the darkness,” to skotos (Gen. 1:3–5; John 1:4–5).
These parallels taken cumulatively prove that creation is a dominant theme throughout John 1:1–5. However, Ashton raises a legitimate question about John’s use of panta without the article, since Jewish and Christian works in Greek most commonly use the article ta with panta when referring to creation (not always, e.g., Isa. 44:24 LXX; Philo, Opif. 28; Josephus, J.W. 5.218). It may be, as many commentators have suggested, that John omits the article to express the idea that every individual thing came into being through the Word, rather than simply the universe as a whole.45 Perhaps John uses panta to refer to everything that has come to be, not just the “creation” of the world and the objects in it but also the events in history. Ashton interprets John 1:3 to refer to God’s activity through the Word “starting, of course, from the creation,” including Israel’s history “right up to the Incarnation.”46 The translation of egeneto as “came to be” (CJB, NABRE) captures this wider sense that includes the ideas of things being made and events happening. Read this way, John 1:3 attributes to the Word’s agency not just the initial creation of the world but the divine work of providence—sustaining the world and making possible everything that happens in it—as well as the “new creation” work of bringing life and light to the world (see 1:4–5, 9). It is a sobering thought that even those people who reject Jesus Christ owe their very existence to him (1:10).
“THROUGH WHOM ALSO HE MADE THE WORLD” (HEBREWS 1:2)
Like John 1, Hebrews 1 contains two statements about Christ’s role in creation, the first in its introductory statement about the Son (Heb. 1:1–3) and the second in its quotation from Psalm 102 (Heb. 1:10–12):
God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom He also made the world. And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power.
. . . And,
“You, Lord, in the beginning laid the foundation of the earth,
And the heavens are the works of Your hands;
They will perish, but You remain;
And they all will wear out like a garment,
And like a robe You will roll them up;
Like a garment they will also be changed.
But You are the same,
And Your years will not come to an end.” [Ps. 102:25–27] (Heb. 1:1–3, 10–12 NASB)47
The statement that God made the world through his Son (1:2) is supported later with a quotation from Psalm 102:25–27 that begins, “In the beginning, Lord, you laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the works of your hands” (Heb. 1:10 NIV, quoting Ps. 101:26 LXX). Here we find in Hebrews 1:1–2 the common title “God” for the Creator and the common verb “made” (epoiēsen) for God’s creative work, and in 1:10 a reference to “the beginning,” “the earth,” and “the heavens,” all of which are quoted from the Psalm and which also occur in Genesis 1:1. One could hardly ask for more.
An analysis of the whole passage confirms that the quotation from Psalm 102 is meant to provide scriptural support for the statement that it was through the Son that God made the world (Heb. 1:2).48 It turns out that all of the Old Testament quotations in Hebrews 1:5–13 offer such support for the statements about the Son in the opening lines (1:1–3), and in the same order, as Table 19 shows (with 1:4 a summary “thesis” that all the quotations support).49
Table 19. Affirmation and Proof in Hebrews 1
| Affirmation (1:1–3 NRSV) | Old Testament Proof (1:5–13 NRSV) |
| God . . . has spoken to us by a Son (1:1–2a). | For to which of the angels did God ever say, “You are my Son; today I have begotten you”? Or again, “I will be his Father, and he will be my Son”? (v. 5, quoting Ps. 2:7; 2 Sam. 7:14). |
| whom he appointed heir of all things (1:2b) | And again, when he brings the firstborn into the world, he says, “Let all God’s angels worship him” (v. 6, quoting Deut. 32:43/ Ps. 97:7). |
| through whom he also created the worlds (1:2c) | And, “In the beginning, Lord, you founded the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands” (v. 10, quoting Ps. 102:25). |
| He is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word (1:3a). | “They will perish, but you remain; they will all wear out like clothing; like a cloak you will roll them up, and like clothing they will be changed. But you are the same, and your years will never end” (vv. 11–12, quoting Ps. 102:26–27). |
| When he had made purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high (1:3b). | And to which of the angels has he ever said, “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet”? (v. 13, quoting Ps. 110:1). |
Despite the clarity of the passage, Unitarians generally dispute that Hebrews 1 refers to the original creation of the world. We quoted earlier Kegan Chandler’s comment that in Hebrews 1:2 the Son is “the one through whom God has established the new age after Christ’s resurrection.”50 Anthony Buzzard devotes a seven-page appendix in one of his books to the problem. He speculates (offering no evidence in support) that Hebrews 1:2 “could refer to future ages, or it may refer to Jesus being the reason for God’s creation of everything.” His main focus is on Hebrews 1:10, which he says refers to “the new political order of the age to come.” In support of this explanation, Buzzard cites the later reference to “the world to come, of which we are speaking” (2:5).51
The term translated “world(s)” (ESV, NASB, NET, NRSV) or “universe” (NABRE, NIV, NLT) in Hebrews 1:2 differs from the word in Hebrews 2:5, oikoumenē, which generally denotes the human world, “the inhabited earth.”52 The writer used this word when he said that God commanded the angels to worship the Son when he brought him “into the world” (1:6). Interpreters have understood this statement to refer either to the inhabited earth (at Christ’s first coming in the incarnation), the heavenly realm (at Christ’s ascension), or the future inhabited realm of the new heavens and new earth (at Christ’s second coming).53 In any case, oikoumenē designates an inhabited realm of some kind, a world system. As F. F. Bruce comments, the “world” in 2:5 “is the new world-order inaugurated by the enthronement of Christ at the right hand of God.”54 When the writer refers to “the world to come, of which we are speaking,” he is referring broadly to the new system being brought about by Christ’s death, resurrection, and exaltation to the throne of God. Elsewhere he calls this forthcoming new world, already inaugurated but not fully consummated, as “the age to come” (6:5) and “the city that is to come” (13:14).
Hebrews 1:2, on the other hand, says that God made tous aiōnas through the Son. This term, which literally means “the ages,” refers unmistakably to the original creation later in the same epistle: “By faith we understand that the worlds [tous aiōnas] were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made out of things which are visible” (11:3 NKJV). The position of this statement at the head of a recitation of the faith of Old Testament saints leading with Abel, Enoch, and Noah (11:4–7, cf. Genesis 4–9) makes it quite certain that the original creation (Genesis 1–2) is meant. This later usage confirms that the original creation is also in view in Hebrews 1:2, whether we translate tous aiōnas as “the universe” (CSB, ESV, NABRE, NIV, NLT), “the world” (CEV, NASB), or “the worlds” (LEB, NET, NKJV, NRSV). If we use the literal translation, “the ages” would include not just “the age to come” (6:5) or “the world to come” (2:5), as Unitarians would have it, but all ages. (Buzzard and Chandler take no notice of the relevance of Hebrews 11:3 to the meaning of 1:2.) Most interpreters, however, argue that in this unusual usage in Hebrews 1:2 and 11:3 the author is referring to the whole universe both temporally and spatially.55 We might express the idea with a paraphrase such as “the temporal realm” to accentuate the temporal denotation of the term while making clear that in context it encompasses the whole of creation. Thus, while the world of redeemed humanity to come that Christ came to inaugurate is the epistle’s major theme, it presents Christ as the Son who was also responsible for bringing the present world or age into existence.
The application of Psalm 102:25 to the Son in Hebrews 1:10 is especially challenging for views that deny that Christ created the world. Buzzard’s claim that Hebrews 1:10 refers to “the new political order of the age to come” might have had more plausibility had the verse used the word oikoumenē, which as we saw usually referred to the world of humanity. Indeed, oikoumenē could refer to the Roman Empire (e.g., Luke 2:1), the political order that dominated much of the known human world in the first century. Instead, Hebrews 1:10, quoting Psalm 102:25, uses standard Jewish language for the creation of the universe. The language of “founding” is standard biblical rhetoric for God’s work as Creator (Job 38:4; Pss. 8:3; 24:1–2; 78:69; 89:11; 104:5; 119:90; Prov. 3:19; 8:29; Isa. 40:21; 48:13; 51:13, 16; Amos 9:6; Zech. 12:1). The parallel description of creation as “the work of your hands” is also language used elsewhere of God’s work in creation (Ps. 8:6; Isa. 64:8; cf. Isa. 40:12) and more broadly of all that God does (e.g., Pss. 28:5; 92:4; 111:7; 138:8; 143:5; Isa. 45:11). Notably, these two descriptions of God’s work, found in parallel lines in Psalm 102:25, are especially prevalent elsewhere in the Psalms. Put these two stock expressions together with “the earth” and “the heavens” as the result of this activity (also common in the Psalms, see 78:69; 89:11; 115:15; 121:2; 124:8; 134:3; 146:6), and Hebrews 1:10 credits the Son with the work of creation as explicitly as biblical language allows.
One other statement in Hebrews 1 demands our attention. After stating that God made the ages or worlds through the Son (1:2), the author asserts also that the Son “upholds all things by the word of His power” (1:3 NASB). The word translated “upholds” (pherōn) means that the Son bears, supports, or sustains all things—and again “all things” (ta panta) refers to everything in creation. Whereas in Colossians 1:17 Paul states that Christ “holds together” all things, the writer of Hebrews states that Christ “holds up” all things. As shown previously, the author cites Psalm 102:26–27 in support of this point. The earth and the heavens are perishing and wearing out; but the Son, as the Lord who made it, will change them, while he remains ever the same (Heb. 1:11–12).
The Son performs this work of sustaining all things “by the word of his power” (Heb. 1:3), which we might more idiomatically translate “by his powerful word.” Whether we understand “his” (autou) here to refer back to God (1:1) or to the Son himself, the text explicitly attributes to the Son the work of wielding the divine, powerful word in sustaining all things. The Jewish wisdom book Sirach had stated that “by his word,” that is, by God’s word, “all things hold together” (Sir. 43:26). This was the standard Jewish position; and it is in that theological milieu that Hebrews asserts that the Son sustains all things by the divine word.
THE WORK OF THE FATHER AND THE SON IN CREATION
All four passages we have examined in this chapter credit the Son, the preincarnate Jesus Christ, with the divine works of making and sustaining the universe. As we also saw, the New Testament repeatedly acknowledges God as Maker and Sustainer of all things. Remarkably, the New Testament uses much the same language for the roles of both the Father and the Son in these divine works (see Table 20).
Table 20. Roles of the Father and the Son in Creation
| God (the Father) | The Lord Jesus (the Son) | |
| ek (ex): “from” | Rom. 11:36; 1 Cor. 8:6; 11:12; cf. 2 Cor. 5:18 | |
| dia (di’) + genitive: “through” | Rom. 11:36; Heb. 2:10 | John 1:3, 10; 1 Cor. 8:6; Col. 1:16; Heb. 1:2 |
| en: “in” | Acts 17:28; Eph. 3:9 | Col. 1:16; cf. John 1:4 |
| eis: “for” | Rom. 11:36; 1 Cor. 8:6 | Col. 1:16 |
It is true that the New Testament never says that all things are “from” (ek) the Son. On this basis, Jehovah’s Witnesses and occasionally others argue that the Son plays an inferior, subservient role in the work of creation.56 This particular wording occurs only a few times, however, in the entire New Testament with reference to all things in creation coming from God or the Father (Rom. 11:36; 1 Cor. 8:6; 11:12; cf. 2 Cor. 5:18). The absence of this wording with reference to Jesus is therefore too slender an argument from silence to prove any inferiority of the Son’s role in creation.
Some sort of “economic” distinction between the roles of the Father and the Son (as well as the Holy Spirit) in creation is consistent with both Scripture and the historic doctrine of the Trinity. Many if not most orthodox Christian theologians would say that there is a sense in which God the Father uniquely is the Source of all things. Yet any such distinction falls short of implying that the Son performs an inferior role. We have already shown that the prepositional phrases Paul uses in 1 Corinthians 8:6 and Colossians 1:16 closely parallel Romans 11:36, where those phrases all refer to God. The issue here is not merely the use of this or that preposition or their lexical meanings, but the use of such phrases as “prepositional metaphysics” in the context of statements about the dependence of the universe on its Creator and Sustainer.
Finally, we should recall that in the broader theological context of biblical, Jewish thought, Yahweh is the sole Maker and Sustainer of all things (Neh. 9:6; Isa. 37:16; 44:24). In this context, it is simply not coherent to regard the Son as a created, angelic being who performed the work of making the universe on behalf of his own Creator. Given that the Son participates in creating and providentially sustaining all things, he must be no less than Yahweh himself.
36. Dunn, Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon, 90.
37. C. John Collins, “Colossians 1.17 ‘Hold Together’: A Co-opted Term,” Biblica 95, no. 1 (2014): 64–87, who discusses all of the texts mentioned here.
38. Pseudo-Aristotle, De Mundo, trans. D. J. Furley, in Aristotle, III, LCL 400 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978), 384, though translating sunestēken not as “constituted” but as “hold together,” as in Col. 1:17b (cf. Collins, “Colossians 1.17,” 69 n. 15).
39. Dunn, Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon, 91.
40. Dunn, Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon, 93.
41. Dunn, Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon, 94.
42. John Ashton, “Excursus IV. The Prologue: God’s Plan for Humankind,” in The Gospel of John and Christian Origins (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014), 155.
43. Ashton, “Excursus IV. The Prologue,” 146.
44. Genēthētō is the passive imperative form of egeneto (which is a middle indicative form).
45. E.g., Edward W. Klink III, John, ZECNT (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2016), 94.
46. Ashton, “Excursus IV. The Prologue,” 145–46.
47. The quotation in Hebrews 1:10–12 is placed in all capitals in the NASB.
48. Contrary, e.g., to the objection of Stafford, Jehovah’s Witnesses Defended, 2nd ed., 171.
49. Various scholars analyze the relationship between Hebrews 1:1–3 and 1:5–13 in similar fashion. See, e.g., the table in Thomas Schreiner, Commentary on Hebrews, Biblical Theology for Christian Proclamation 36 (Nashville: Holman Reference, 2015), 63.
50. Chandler, The God of Jesus, 300.
51. Buzzard, Jesus Was Not a Trinitarian, 419, 423.
52. BDAG, s.v. “oikoumenē,” 699.
53. See the lists of studies advocating these three views in Lozano, The Proskynesis of Jesus in the New Testament, 119.
54. Bruce, Epistle to the Hebrews, 71.
55. E.g., Craig R. Koester, Hebrews: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AYBC 36 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), 178.
56. E.g., Stafford, Jehovah’s Witnesses Defended, 3rd ed., 380–81
Further Reading
FIRSTBORN OF CREATION REVISITED… AGAIN!
JESUS CHRIST: SUPREME OVER ALL CREATION
CHRIST: THE OFFSPRING OF CREATION?
The Book of Hebrews and Jesus as Creator