Grafted-In Ministries

By: Skip Moen, Ph.D.

“And Yeshua said to him, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good except Elohim alone.” Mark 10:18 

Before we look at this verse today, let me ask you this:  Does your relationship with Elohim depend on the doctrine we are investigating, or does it continue with or without the doctrinal conclusions?  Do you believe in the Father because of what you have learned about theological ideas or do you have a relationship with Him that allows you to question and examine without fear that you will somehow lose your faith?

We may not actually come to conclusions as we investigate, but we will no longer be naive about these things.  Is that OK?  Can we look, think, ask — and then continue even if we don’t get it all figured out?  Or must be come to a “correct” understanding in order for Elohim to still be real to us?  Did Abraham believe in the Trinity?

No one – As we have learned, exegesis of a text must not violate the obvious meaning of the text (the Pashat). What the text says is what the text says. It is not some hidden, mystical code that really reveals something entirely different (this is the problem with exegesis of Song of Songs as allegory). In this case, if the text says that no one is good except Elohim, that’s what it means. And, by the way, this is how anyone in the audience would have understood what Yeshua said since it is perfectly compatible with the Jewish view of Elohim’s goodness. To attempt to press this text into another mold violates what it plainly states. Attempts like that should give us great pause (and suspicion).

Unfortunately, the plain meaning of this text is a problem for those who claim that Yeshua is also (simultaneously) equal to Elohim. The idea of the Godhead (the three “persons” in one being) implies that whatever is true of the Godhead is equally simultaneously true of each “person” in the Godhead. If Yeshua is Elohim in this sense, then He cannot at the same time be somehow less than Elohim. This problem is usually handled by the claim that Yeshua is both fully Elohim and fully Man. How exactly that is possible is not and cannot be explained since there is no metaphysics available in human experience to show how one thing can also be completely and fully another thing in its essentials at the same time and in the same space. And we are not talking about relational conditions (like I can be a father and a husband at the same time). We are talking about “persons” and in human thought, a person is a unique entity occupying space and time independently from any other person. So how one “person” can be equally two other “persons” simultaneously is a big problem. Perhaps that’s why Millard Erickson (who defends the Trinity as an essential doctrine) says that this doctrine “is so absurd from a human standpoint that no one would have invented it” and therefore it must have been revealed by Elohim.[1]

Back to the plain meaning of the text. The Greek oudeis (no one) is pretty strong (literally “not even one”). When Yeshua says that no one is good but Elohim, does he or does he not include himself? The answer is obvious. He includes himself. He falls within the category of human beings and is therefore not essentially good like Elohim. In this sentence, Yeshua excludes himself from the attribute given to Elohim. Now either he is lying about this or this is what he really meant. And if this is what he really meant, then how can he be, at the same time, the very Elohim he says he isn’t? There is nothing in this text that suggests he is speaking only from his human perspective (in his “fully Man” identity). That has to be added to the text in order to circumvent the obvious meaning that Yeshua is not good like Elohim is good. To make this text fit a Trinitarian doctrine it is necessary to reconstruct the text so that it doesn’t say what it says.

Before you fall into theological apoplexy, just try reading what it says. Then we can begin to answer the question, “In what way is Yeshua divine if he asserts that he is not good like Elohim?”

Footnote:

[1]Millard Erickson, Christian Theology, first edition, p. 342