from pages 18 -20 of “Is Jesus In The Godhead Or Is the Godhead In Jesus?”
by Bro. Gordon Magee
Are Christ’s Prayers an Embarrassment?
A dear trinitarian brother came to me one day and said, “Brother Magee, I think that is a great embarrassment to you Oneness people—that Jesus prayed.”
I said, “You are wrong. But I want to tell you something: it is a great embarrassment to you.”
He asked, “How would it be an embarrassment to me? I have never viewed it as such.”
I replied, “What happened that night in the garden when Jesus prayed?”
“Oh,” he answered, “it is simple. If you believe in the trinity, it is easy.”
I asked him to make it easy for me.
“Well,” he said, “Here is the second person praying to the first person. It is as simple as that.”
I said, “Just a moment, please! Was the second person God?”
“Yes, certainly, the second person was God,” he assured me.
“And was the first person God?”
Again he assured me that the answer was in the affirmative.
Then I asked, “God prays to God?”
“Yes,” was the firm reply.
I said, “Sir, if you pardon me for saying it, that exposition of yours, to my mind, is confusion twice confounded. Would you explain to me, please, how a divine person could pray in
His divinity without undeifying Himself?” If we ever hear someone praying, we know they need help, and God most assuredly does not need help. A divine person does not need help; only men need help. The trinitarian explanation of
John 17—that we find one divine person praying to another divine person—is an absurdity. We see in
John 17 humanity praying to deity.
The trinitarian brother asked, “Then did not He pray to Himself?”
“No! He did not pray to Himself!”
“What did He do?”
I replied, “In His human nature He prayed to His divine nature.”
“Well,” he said, “that is praying to Himself!”
“You can have it that way; if Jesus were an ordinary person I would agree with you that that is praying to Himself. But Jesus was not ordinary—Jesus was extraordinary. Jesus was God and man!” If Jesus Christ had a dual nature why then should we think it incredible that He should perform a dual role?
There is a wrong way of saying the right thing. For example, I would not say that God died. No one could bring me to say that God died. For obvious reasons, God cannot die. But I do not hesitate to say that He who died was God. It is simply the right way of saying the right thing. Paul said to Timothy, “Hold fast the form of sound words” (
II Timothy 1:13). There is a certain form of sound language that cannot be condemned. Let us say the right thing the right way!