matthew1624:
I’m not sure if this belongs here but…
I’m curious, has the second person of the Trinity always been referred to as the Son of God or was that only a title after the Incarnation?
Any guidance on this would be great. I’m already looking on
NewAdvent.org for Athanasius’ (spelling?) writings.
Thanks and God Bless…
Very short answer: the title was around long before the Incarnation, but is fully realised in Jesus.
In Israel, and among Israel’s neighbours, it could point to:
- heroes of semi-divine parentage
- the human king adopted by the national God
- the Davidic king adopted as “son” by the God of Israel, the true King of Israel
- “angelic” beings inferior to the God of Israel
- divinities lower in rank than the supreme god of a particular pantheon & grouped together under him in the “assembly of the gods” - Israel made Canaanite polytheism safe for Israel by demythologising these “sons of God” and making them into the created courtiers of JHWH, mirroring the earthly king’s human court.
- Gods were routinely thought of in family groups, joined by the normal family ties. So they had sons.
The Christian doctrine is - AFAICS - a “transposition” of the relationship indicated by these ideas, into an eternal, metaphysical, relationship. The NT emphases on the unique nature of the sonship of Jesus to His Father, and on the adoption of Christians as sons by the Father, avoid polytheism, and do so without separating man from God.
The interesting thing about Jesus - as though there were only one
- is that He takes ideas that were found in the Bible & Jewish speculation (about Divine sonship, Messianism, the Servant of JHWH, etc.) and re-interprets them in the light of His own understanding of His mission.
His insistence on service is particularly interesting, because some gods who were thought of as sons of other gods, were originally unconnected with them; then become members of their retinue; then became their servants; then became their sons. The dividing-line between servantship and sonship is rather fluid - the Greek word pais can mean:
which is rather awkward for translators of the NT and for the understanding of NT Christology, as in Acts 2 & 4.
He doesn’t
deny His Messiahship, but He doesn’t claim it - the idea had too many nationalistic & triumphalistic associations. He takes the sting out of them by interpreting them by the title “Son of Man”, with the content of “Servant of the Lord” (especially as in Isaiah 53). *That *is the kind of Messianic “Son of God” He is. And that’s just the beginning
An excellent book on the whole subject is “He that Cometh”, by Sigmund Mowinckel; if you can get it. It’s a history of the Messianic idea. ##
