Jim Blackburn posits several different ways of interpreting John 14:28, which appears to contradict the doctrine of the Trinity when Jesus says “…the Father is greater than I.”
Transcript:
Host: We go now to Jake in Temple, Texas watching on YouTube. Jake, thanks for watching on YouTube. Your question for Jim Blackburn.
Caller: Hi, yeah, can you guys hear me okay?
Host: Yes we can.
Caller: All right. So I’m an ex-Mormon, now I’m Catholic, I came into this Church this past Easter, and I was curious how the Catholic Church interprets the verse John 14:28 and Jesus’s statement about the Father being greater than him.
Jim: Okay. Do you have that passage in front of you, could you read that?
Caller: Yeah, I do. Do you want me to read it out for you?
Jim: Sure.
Caller: Okay, so it says, “You heard me say, ‘I am going away and I am coming back to you.’ If you loved me, you would be glad that I am going to the Father, for the father is greater than I.”
Jim: Okay. Okay, so your question is…it assumes that you’ve mentioned you’re from a Mormon perspective, or Mormon background, or an ex-Mormon, that does this somehow then indicate that Jesus is not equal to the Father? He’s not God? Is that what you’re…?
Caller: I was, yeah, exactly, I was taught that this proves that Jesus is subordinate, and now, er subordinate to the Father, and now as a Catholic I’m wondering how the Catholic Church interprets that verse.
Jim: Okay, and I’m not sure that the Catholic Church has a, you know, a specific interpretation of this verse. The–in fact I could check the Catechism and in the back of the Catechism there’s a reference where you can look up any Bible verse and see if it’s referenced in the Catechism. I don’t think this one is, not that I can recall, but that said, the–how can we understand this? And there are a couple of different approaches to this.
Number one, we need to keep in mind that Jesus is God incarnate. He has a human soul and he has a divine soul. Paul tells us that in his humanity, you know, Jesus, he really hid his divinity in a certain way. He did this because his friends couldn’t, wouldn’t be able to comprehend his greatness, really, if he if he didn’t do this, and he emptied himself, as Paul says. Well, so we could look at this as though Jesus is coming from his human perspective. He’s not a human person here, but he has a human–he’s a human incarnation of the second person of the Trinity. And through his humanity, his divinity, and the Father’s divinity, is greater than his humanity. Now that’s one way that some Bible commentators will will look at this and point out how Jesus can make such a bold statement.
Another perspective, if we were to say, “Well, Jesus is coming from the perspective of his divinity,” is that in Catholic theology and in Christian theology going way back, the very first several centuries of the Church, really the divinity of Christ and the divinity of the Father the divinity of the Holy Spirit, and how this all relates, was a very big topic, and it took centuries for these things to be ironed out and–[music playing] I hear music as we’re going to a break. Let me it pick it up from there after the break.
Host: We were speaking, Jim Blackburn, when we left, to Jake in Temple, Texas about what does the Catholic Church understand by Jesus’ statement “the Father is greater than I?”
Yes, and in particular we’re talking about John 14:28. And I did look in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and I could not find a reference for that. Before the break, I approached that from the perspective that many commentators do, in that Christ may be speaking in regard–with regard to his human nature, not his divine nature. And of course the divine nature of the Father is greater than than the human nature of Christ, and that’s one way of looking at this.
Another way the theologians will sometimes look at these types of statements of Christ would be that we could look at the Trinity itself, and in the Trinity there is a, we could say, even though all three persons are equal, there’s a certain…almost a hierarchy within the Trinity, of the Father being the first person of the Trinity, the Son being the second person, and the Holy Spirit being the third person of the Trinity. These are–they’re even listed by first, second, and third persons. And in fact we often will, when we look at this, look at it from this perspective: We see that that’s really how we distinguish between the three persons of the Trinity, is their relationship with each other. The son proceeds from–er, is begotten of, the Father, and the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, and these processions, these–the way that they relate to each other, we see the Father is, in a sense–from our perspective at least–first, the Son second, and the Holy Spirit [third], even though they exist eternally as such, they’re, say, there’s a certain ordering to the persons of the Trinity in this way.
So sometimes theologians, we’ll look at a statement of Jesus like this, and relate it to–on that divine level rather than the difference between the human nature and the divine nature–human nature of Christ and the divine nature of the Father. So I hope that helps and I would say, if you want to try to research this further, go to a good Catholic commentary and and look up this verse in a good Catholic commentary, and I’m sure you’ll you’ll find a lot more there.