Reply to Mike’s Comment

Mike, who’s doing a master’s in linguistics and has a BA in Greek, posted this comment on my post about Nick Norelli’s “I am God” post: “For one your description of the dependent clauses of verse 40 is methodologically flawed. Dependent clauses are not created from simple sentences. Whether you’ve studies linguistics, I do not know, but that sort of “deep structure” for such grammatical constructions has been rejected by the vast majority of linguists – even the one who first proposed them (i.e. Chomsky – cf. most recently The Minimalist Program theory). Dependent clauses always function differently that independent clauses. At a discourse level, they function as offline material, not online.” As usual, all “you”s here are directed towards Mike.

Mike: it was easy for you to claim that my description is “methodologically flawed” but I sensed you found it hard to prove and support such claim. Here’s why:

1. Although you didn’t mention it, you are probably referring to Transformational Grammar (TG) which arose from Noam Chomsky’s original work which has deep and surface structures, and that his most current theory now is called Minimalist Program, which you mentioned. Yes, a lot of linguists has offerred competing grammar frameworks and grammar theories of how to interpret and understand the structure of languages, like (1) generative grammar, (2) dependency grammar, (3) cognitive grammar, (4) stochastic grammar and (5) functional grammar. Generative grammar itself includes TG, GPSG, LFG & CG with Minimalist program (MP) as a subtype of TG. Each of them has their own specific and different methodologies and terms in explaining generation, movement, transformation, phrasal structures, etc., if ever they have any comparable treatment of such at all or have terms and concepts that are common at all. Your rebuttal is vague because you failed to mention which ones of these grammar theories is more scientific and acceptable to you, if there is any or if you do not believe in any of them. Let me restate the weakness of your counterclaim: “methodologically flawed”, but under what grammar framework or theory? Please remember, any dependent clause generation theory developed under one of those framework can be described as flawed using a competing grammar theory or framework due to lack of consensus among theoretical linguists. So here’s your homework: specify which grammar framework and whose version you subscribe to and show me how from that framework my description is methodologically flawed. Show me what restrictions there are, if any, in combining simple sentences into one complex sentence through subordination in such framework. But if you really are keen on disproving my description, try using RRG (role and reference grammar), since it has a more universal theoretical foundation (thus sounder, leaner, more flexible and has more explanatory power) than generative grammar theories or framework, particularly Chomskyan grammar theories or TG. RRG has not been fully extended or researched on some areas of linguistic theory though so if you want, you can try to supplement it with a modified LFG (lexical functional grammar) or TG. And from that I will respond to you point by point.
2. You thought that my description is based on “deep structure”, and that since it is based on “deep structure that has been rejected by the vast majority”, then my description is flawed. But I did not say that my description is based on “deep structure”, I was just couching my description of sentential structures in terms that are accessible. Therefore, my description is not flawed in the manner of “Transformational Grammar’s deep structure is flawed” according to your understanding. The force of my argument that Jesus said he is a man is based on simultaneous recognition that (a) in structure, “a man” is an adjective verbless dependent clause from a copula verb embedded in an independent clause, or an appositive phrase attached to an independent clause “You seek to kill me”, and (b) in origin, this dependent clause was made from a simple sentence (or independent clause) “I am a man” which is of the copulative sentence type (aka copula-type sentence). [The appositive phrase "a man" can be treated as a verbless clause of the copula-type verb without a subordinator. This kind of analysis of course cannot be applied with phrases that are not clausal/sentential arguments or modifiers in a larger syntactic unit.] And that is independent of any grammar theory, such that it can be restated under different grammar theories. I agree with you that dependent clauses function differently than independent clauses, whether on a conceptual level (semantic, pragmatic, cognitive, discourse, etc) or morphosyntactic level. But that confirms very much the structure part and never disallow the origin part.
3. You said that “that sort of ‘deep structure’ for such grammatical constructions has been rejected by a majority of linguists”. Yet you failed to cite and quote any published article, book or journal by even one linguist of any grammar theory that corroborates your claim that majority of linguists rejected constructing dependent clauses from simple sentences, so your claim in effect is vacuous, without any real substance. What you need to do to strengthen your arguments is to provide a proper citation of a linguist under a defined grammar framework and quote and explain what that linguist said, in relation to the impossibility of combining simple sentences through subordination. Unless you do so, my view of your counterclaim is that it is just disagreeing for the sake of disagreeing.

Therefore, my description or analysis withstood your criticism, and until you are able to overcome the weaknesses of your counter-claims, it will stand. Don’t worry whether I am a trained linguist or not, just throw off those technical stuffs and jargons and I will wade myself through them. You would know anyway if I understand those technical stuff by the sensibleness of my replies.

Onto the second paragraph of your comment where you said: “Secondly, Paul, quite clearly, believes that Jesus is God – evidenced from his regular use of κυριος throughout his letters – he regularly aligns OT passages that refer to YHWH and puts Jesus in that position. If you have’t read, Pauline Christology by Gordon Fee, then you need to.” It seems your not sure at all that Paul believe Jesus is God, you modified “clearly” with “quite”. But before I answer your comment, let’s have a short digress.

I didn’t mention it in my earlier post to Nick, but a true prophet does not exceed what YHWH said (Deuteronomy 18:20-22, Jeremiah 23:28-32). Jesus, being a true prophet (Matthew 21:9-11, 46; Luke 4:21-24, 7:14-17, 24:19, John 6:14-15) foretold by YHWH through Moses who is himself a prophet (Deuteronomy 18:15-19, Acts 3:20-23), followed the words of YHWH by declaring YHWH as the only true God. Had Jesus declared a different God, he would not be a true prophet. I’ve already given ample proofs in my reply to Nick establishing what Jesus teaches, so I will not mention it anymore here. How about proof of being a true disciple of Jesus? In the same way, Jesus said that those who are his sheeps listen to his words, believes in him and follow him (John 10:26-27) and a true disciple remains in his words and they will come to know the truth (John 8:31-32). Now, lets use this test with Paul. Did he or did he not say that Jesus is a man? Did he wrote Jesus is God instead? Which one did he wrote explicitly? Before we answer that, I need to point out to you that if what Paul said is different than what Jesus said, he has not remained in Jesus words, thus he is not a true disciple and has not known the truth. If he did say Jesus is a man and that the Father is the only God, then he is a true follower of Christ, a true Christian, not a pseudo-Christian like trinitarians. So which one is it?

According to the writer of Acts, Paul is a disciple (Acts 9:26-27; 20:7). So Apostle Paul must have taught and written the same as what Jesus also taught and spoke. That is confirmed by the Bible as Apostle Paul himself wrote verbatim and unequivocally, that “to us” (that includes him), “there is one God, the Father…and one Lord (kurios), Jesus Christ…” (I Corinthians 08:4-7) and that Jesus is a man (1 Timothy 1:1-2; 2:3-5). So no, Apostle Paul didn’t clearly believe Jesus is God. Instead, he believes Jesus is a man and that the Father is the only God. See how everything connects and how there are no contradictions in the Bible, properly interpreted. Your claim about Paul’s beliefs is against what Paul himself explicitly wrote, a contradiction between you and Paul. On my part, it is not difficult to decide and choose whom to believe, and to know whether you are saved or not. It is safe to say then that your understanding of Paul’s belief that Jesus is God is, “very clearly and more than quite clearly”, just an extrapolation, and worse, a misrepresentation of Paul’s actual views and my views are not.

It’s clear to me now that you failed to totally engage my arguments, as you touched only about dependent clauses, never said a word about my stance that Jesus corrected those Jews, and redirected your comments instead to Apostle Paul’s supposed belief, which is a different topic. I would like to point out to you that if you fail to disprove my claim that Jesus corrected the Jews about their understanding that he is equal with God or is a God, then you have shattered all Trinitarian claims that Jesus is God. Why? Because these very verses are Jesus actual words about himself. All other people whom you will cite or any verse that you will quote where it is not Jesus who is talking or writing about himself, even if it can be proven that they indeed recognized Jesus as God, are just ascribing to Jesus things that Jesus did not said himself. These citations then are weaker and can be shown to be a rebellion againt Jesus. Even Paul said that if he, in any one of his epistles or in the Acts, or any other apostle proclaim a different good news, then he should not be believed, even if that verse can be proven to be not a forgery (Galatians 1:6-9). You and those other authors of books that you have cited are therefore not to be believed (Deuteronomy 13:1-3), calamity will befall you and them (Deuteronomy 13:4-5, Jeremiah 14:14-16, Ezekiel 13:6-10) and YHWH will require an account from those who did not believe Jesus (Deuteronomy 18:18-19), and that includes you.

I will not devote time about Trinitarian misconceptions about Apostle Paul’s writings here as this post’s topic is originally about the validity of arguing the deity or humanity of Jesus from finding him saying the exact words “I am a God” or “I am a man”. As for your contention that Apostle Paul regularly aligns OT passages that refer to YHWH and puts Jesus in that position, there is an answer to that without resorting to believing that Jesus is God. Even if the answer is already in my head, I will not answer in this post but will wait until you have replied and provided a more substantial rebuttal that my description of combining simple sentences into a complex sentence through subordination is methodologically flawed. I will give you time to do some reading of the Bible. Who knows, you might find it yourself and in that way, you will cherish the fact that its you who discovered it.

Mike, I’ve read some of your blogs. It’s good that you have a strong interest in biblical hermeneutics and in translation. Keep the motivation up. My parting words: Since you love to read books, don’t just feed your mind with books that agree with your current stance. Read books that directly contradict your stance and evaluate the merits of their arguments. This way, whatever belief you settle in, you will have firmer conviction. But most of all and hopefully, may you stumble on the truth. Lastly, give the Bible a weighter value than those books which try to explain it but in fact undermines it, these will lead you astray. I pray that may you be set free from blindness which Satan has shrouded this world. Cheers.

I will be going on a 3 week holiday to Southeast Asia from tomorrow, so I can only reply to comments after I come back.