**You use the word literally. Is this how you resolve your difference with what is written in Scripture?**
Difference?.....I harmonize the scriptures, not just pick the first portion of John 1:14, and build a doctrine around it. Read the last part: “..full of grace and truth”.
Where does the Son declare grace and truth to originate?....the Father.
**That when John wrote the Word became flesh, he did not mean that the Word literally became flesh?**
He meant that God was IN Christ, as Paul so accurately pointed out many times in his epistles.
BUT......here is a question for you: With your separate and distinct persons of God theology; can you quote a scripture that shows the FATHER receiving anything divine from the Son?
When you place the Father (Spirit) in the Son (divinely created flesh, with a soul), you have defined Jesus Christ in the simplest of terms.
Difference?.....I harmonize the scriptures, not just pick the first portion of John 1:14, and build a doctrine around it.
The question isn’t whether God was in Christ. He was. The Father was in the Son and the Son was in the Father. Neither is it a question of whether the Father ever received anything divine from the Son. Clearly, everything that came from the Son was received from the Father. The question is whether the Son is a separate divine person from the Father.
I could see the harmony in your belief if it were not written in Scripture that the Word was God and the Word became flesh. Jesus Christ could be defined as the Father (Spirit) in the Son (divinely created flesh, with a soul).
But it is written in Scripture that the Word, which was God, became flesh, and I do not see how your explanations that God is not flesh are in harmony with what is written in Scripture.