Proposition # 11: At John 14:9 Jesus proves he is God when he says to Philip, “He who has seen me has seen the Father.”
Response: If this verse proves anything along the lines of trinitarian thinking, it proves that Jesus is the Father; something which they do not teach. [1] Rather, they clearly distinguish between the ‘persons of the Godhead.’ This shows the inconsistency of trinitarian logic.
There are at least three ways in which something can be seen.
First is the literal way, visually perceiving something which is physically tangible.
Secondly, something can be seen in a vision, similar to watching a motion picture. In Acts 10:9-12 Peter saw ‘something like a sheet’ containing animals descending from heaven. Was there an actual sheet with real animals? No, it was a vision; he visually perceived something that was not physically tangible or literally present.
Finally, something can be seen in a representative way. God is representatively seen at Judges 13:21, 22, “The angel of Yahweh appeared no more to Manoah and to his wife. Then Manoah knew that he was the angel of Yahweh. And Manoah said to his wife, ‘We shall surely die, for we have seen God.’” It is clear from the context that Manoah knew that he had literally seen an angel, and not God, yet he spoke of having seen God because this angel was acting as His representative. Likewise, the Father was representatively seen in Jesus.
Trinitarians suggest, without evidence, that this angel and other theophanies (sightings of God) in the Hebrew Scriptures were pre-incarnate visitations of the second person of the Godhead. However, John said that “no man has seen God at any time.” He was talking about literally seeing God. So if people have seen the second person of the Godhead, especially in a pre-incarnate form, then they have literally seen God. Trinitarians want to limit whom John means to simply the Father, but if trinitarianism is the truth John would have had to specifically say the Father to be accurate. — John 1:18
Joh 1:18 REV No one has ever seen God; the only begotten Son, who is in a most intimate relationship with [Lit. “in the bosom of”] the Father, he has explained him.
[1] There are those who teach that Jesus is the Father, the Son, and the holy spirit. This view is called modalism, Jesus Only, or Oneness.