More on Christadelphians

Today’s Logos’ blog post refers to a post by Michael Heiser in which he looks at John 10:30-33 using Logos’ syntax search. He is seeking to undermine the JW and Mormon argument that these verses do not refer to Jesus divinity because of the lack of the definite article. I once mentioned these verses to a JW as a reason why I believe that Jesus is God and he replied it was a Jew who made this statement so of course it was wrong. I protested that Jews are certainly monotheists and therefore they must have understood that Jesus was claiming to be God. His response assured me that JWs have a low opinion of Jews. I have never met a Christadelphian but I did read their online response to John 10:30 and others (Jn 1:1+, Phil 2:6-9, Isa 9:6, Jn 20:28).
Unfortunately they concentrate on Jn 10:30 and ignore the context. Their argument is rather limited: “Even the sentence in its structure indicates two persons: ‘I’ + ‘the Father” equals 2.” If you want to even begin to understand these verses you need to look at the context.
1. Did Jesus claim to be God? Yes = he is God; No = what did he mean?
2. No. Did he mean as the Christadelphians assert: “Christ and his Father were one in the same sense that Christ prayed the disciples would be one (Jn. 17:11), and a man and his wife are one (Mark 10:7-8), and the church is one (Gal. 3:28). One in purpose and thought, not in being”? Yes = he is not God; No = what did he mean?
3. How did his audience respond to his remarks? He claimed to be God (no one seemed to accept that at this time); He was claiming to be one in purpose and thought with God. In other words, he was a prophet or a man after God’s own heart like David. From the response of the Jews in seeking to stone him they clearly thought he was claiming to be God: “The Jews answered him, saying, ‘For a good work we would not stone you; but for blasphemy; and because that you, being a man, make yourself God.’” Christadelphians must therefore conclude that Jesus was totally misunderstood and that although he was claiming one thing his audience wanted to kill him because they thought he was saying something else. Personally, if a group of people wanted to kill me due to a misunderstanding of what I said I would quickly clear up that misunderstanding!
4. The other option is to take the stance that Jesus was a good man and the Jews hated good men so they made up false charges against him. This was the approach of the JW I mentioned above. This makes the argument rather personal and is unnecessary I believe. I would be interested to know what any Christadelphians think of this so please drop me a comment.