thomstark.net
it's only a flesh wound
OMG Man 02: Son of God
I still hear people ask, “Do you believe Jesus is the Son of God?” By that question, they always mean, “Do you believe Jesus is God?” I usually cringe when I hear it, only because I’ve forgotten how long ago it was when this Sunday School understanding of the appellative “Son of God” was stripped from me. As strange as it may seem, the title “Son of God” does not denote divinity. It is ordinarily a title granted to a monarch. In Psalm 2 (a royal coronation psalm) Yahweh confers sonship upon the king (traditionally thought to be David, but an ancient king of Judea at any rate):
I will tell of the decree of Yahweh:
He said to me, “You are my son;
today I have begotten you.
Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage,
and the ends of the earth your possession.
You shall break them with a rod of iron,
and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.” (Psalm 2:7-9)
Upon his ascension to the throne, the king is adopted by God. Another example: when Yahweh is making his covenant with David, Yahweh promises of David’s son and successor, Solomon, “I will be his father, and he will be my son” (2 Sam 7:14).
In the New Testament period, the phrase “son of god” was also used of Roman emperors. The title was even inscribed on Roman coins. “Son of God” was generally just a synonym for “king.” When Nathaniel says to Jesus, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” this is an example of Hebrew parallelism. “Son of God” and “King of Israel” are two ways of saying the same thing. He is essentially confessing his belief that Jesus is Israel’s long awaited messianic (anointed) liberator. In the introduction to Mark’s gospel, the same parallelism is used. Mark begins with “the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (Mark 1:1). In other words, this Jesus is the liberator king, anointed by God. A few verses later, Mark presents Jesus’ baptism in parallel to the coronation psalm we looked at above:
And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” (Mark 1:10-11)
The descent of the Spirit upon Jesus represents the anointing of a king. At Jesus’ baptism, he is adopted by God as his unique Son, the chief representative of Israel, who as king will act on Israel’s behalf. Mark wishes us to see the baptism of Jesus as his coronation, because the baptism foreshadows Jesus’ sacrificial death at the end of the narrative. That sacrificial death is the paradigmatic act through which Jesus represents Israel as Israel’s king. This is why Mark puts the confession of Jesus as “Son of God” on the lips of a Roman centurion upon Jesus’ death. “Now when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, ‘Truly this man was the son of a god’” (Mark 15:39). In other words, the centurion recognizes something in Jesus of royalty, according to Mark. Jesus spends the entire narrative in Mark attempting to keep his true identity secret. This is a storytelling device Mark uses to drive home his theological point that Jesus’ kingship (his “Son of Godness”) is seen paradigmatically in his suffering on behalf of the nation.
“Son of God” is also sometimes used of the nation of Israel as a whole, as in Hosea 11:1:
When Israel was a child, I loved him,
and out of Egypt I called my son.
Yet Hosea goes on to show how Israel, God’s son, did not heed his father’s call, but kept going after other gods. Thus, when Matthew applies this same verse (“out of Egypt I called my son”) to Jesus (Matt 2:15), Matthew is making the claim that Jesus will act on Israel’s behalf, but unlike the nation, this representative Son will be faithful to the Father.
Thus, it should be clear that when Jesus sometimes refers to himself as God’s Son, or when he refers to God as his Father, he is not claiming divinity for himself in any ontological (real) sense. By that logic, he must have believed his Jewish opponents were the second through seventy-second persons of the unholy Satanhead, since he identified them as sons of the devil (John 8:44). No, in reality, the issue at stake here is what Jesus is doing. When the Evangelists identify Jesus as “God’s Son,” what they are claiming is that he was appointed by God to do what God wanted done.
February 4, 2010 - 9:51 PM
I still remember when you preached this same basic message at West Fork. Fun times.
February 8, 2010 - 12:15 AM
Interesting that no one has commented on this one yet. (Btw, if they were all this short I could catch up in no time.) Certainly your argument here is true. But I learned this argument from people who firmly believe in the divinity of Jesus (and I remain convinced on both points). This makes me wonder if there’s another question that needs to be explored vis a vis this title, namely, whether the meaning of this title expanded to include divinity in addition to royalty within the New Testament period. It obviously came to mean more at some point, so the question is when.
February 8, 2010 - 2:00 AM
After Christianity’s break with Judaism.
“I remain convinced on both points.”
Why do you need to say this? Are you trying to convince me that you remain convinced? Why do I need to be convinced that you remain convinced?
There is zero evidence that this title “expanded to include divinity in addition to royalty within the New Testament period.” The movement was in the other direction as Judaism etched away from polytheism and polemicized their polytheist neighbors. It was the more explicit language of deity ascribed to Christ that began to be read flatly by the Gentile church, out of the context of second temple Judaism, that would have resulted in the change in the connotations of “son of God.”
It wasn’t long before “son of man” was even taken to be a title of divinity. That should tell you something.
February 8, 2010 - 2:05 AM
(Part of the evidence that the tendency to read the exalted statements about Jesus as ontological affirmations was largely due to Christianity’s break with Judaism is found in the fact that the Ebionites, the Jewish Christians, continued to speak of Jesus with exalted language while denying that he was God in nature.)
February 8, 2010 - 9:06 AM
Thom, I’m curious if you might be so kind to give me your thoughts concerning the use of titles such as “son of god” or even ones like “morning star” for emperors or pharaohs, etc. Surely these titles were given to state-heads to refer to their supreme power in the land, but did people use those monikers out of a belief that an emperor was, ontologically, divine?
February 8, 2010 - 9:49 AM
Well, all we have are texts, so it’s hard to speak on popular usage, of course. But it’s clearly the case that while Egypt ascribed full divinity to their kings, Israel never did so, even back during its polytheistic days. Some kings seem to have been divinized just a little, hyperbolically. I’ll explain what all this means for second temple Judaism when you get to #07.
February 12, 2010 - 2:24 AM
Hmm you have a point. Ps 2:2 in the LXX reads “against the Lord and against his Christ”. Every anointed king of Israel was a Christ. And the phrase “today I have begotten thee” does seem adoptionist. The begetting in v.7 seems tied to the setting in v.6 and reads more like a coronation pronouncement than it does a speech to a zygote. Mk 1:11 in this light would be a coronation speech commemorating when Jesus was adopted as son and anointed as Christ and when the eternal Logos inhabited his body. This sounds like the Paulinian or Socinian position. You are re-inventing the heretical wheel here. I will post the standard rebuttal when I find it.
February 12, 2010 - 3:24 AM
Wow. I can’t find a standard rebuttal, just references to adoptionism or dynamic monarchianism being heresies. Paul of Samosata was condemned at a council in Antioch in 269 but this seems to be as much for his character as for anything he said. If I find something I will post it.
February 12, 2010 - 8:22 AM
Nathan,
Please don’t copy and paste arguments you find from the internet.
If all you can come up with is, “That’s heresy,” I’m not interested.
February 12, 2010 - 1:51 PM
I’m trying to honestly answer some questions you have and have tried to see things from your point of view. Some of these questions have been raised before and answered before. If they have been answered before then you need to respond to those answers. I don’t think you are interested in an honest debate. You just want to spout whatever crazy ideas pop into your head and then disarm any criticism. I’m not going to call you a heretic because I am not your judge and these are complex issues, but you are treading on dangerous ground. Good luck.
February 12, 2010 - 1:57 PM
I love that I got this nonsense on the least controversial post.
February 12, 2010 - 8:11 PM
I’ve never seen a heretical wheel. Is it shiny?
February 13, 2010 - 9:26 PM
In the Joss Whedon sense, yes it is.
February 28, 2010 - 4:01 AM
I’d never caught this connection.
Sort of makes sense why the standing power eventually crucified Jesus. I mean, if the people were calling for Jesus to become their savior, their King, it could eventually push towards a full revolt.
February 28, 2010 - 12:46 PM
That’s right, Keet. That’s exactly what’s going on behind these texts. And it wasn’t just on the part of the masses. Jesus himself was making incisive public criticisms of power and deliberate political maneuvers designed to undermine established authority structures set in place by Rome.
March 7, 2010 - 12:36 PM
Hi Michael,
You said:
“This makes me wonder if there’s another question that needs to be explored vis a vis this title, namely, whether the meaning of this title expanded to include divinity in addition to royalty within the New Testament period. It obviously came to mean more at some point, so the question is when.”
This raises the old “Chicken or the Egg” question. Once one recognizes that the title “Son of God” was originally a royal title for the Messiah, then I would suggest that one should try to interpret certain biblical accounts accordingly in light of historical probability.
Take John 5:18, for example. If “son of God” was synonymous with “Messiah”, then Jesus’ claim that God was his father would have likely been heard as a claim to be the Messiah. This implies that the charge the Jews’ made against Jesus, namely, that he was “making himself equal to God”, would not have been based on the modern popular notion that Jesus was claiming ontological equality with the Father. As God’s Messiah he was God’s supreme agent, and, according to the Rabbi’s, “the agent is as the principal”. This was functional equality, not ontological equality. If this is correct, then the charge probably wasn’t based on the notion that it was improper for the Messiah to have such authority; the charge may have been based on the perceived impropriety of a man placing himself in such a position . In other words, his perceived equality with God wasn’t necessarily the primary issue, but the fact that he “ma[de] himself” equal in this way. — See ‘Making Himself Equal With God’ (John 5:17-18): The alleged Challenge to Jewish Monotheism in the Fourth Gospel”, by J.C. O’Neill, found in Irish Biblical Studies, April 1995
That’s one possibility. Professor McGrath offers another plausible interpretation in his book, “John’s Apologetic Christology”. However one chooses to interpret the puzzle at John 5:18, Jesus’ reply makes it clear that he was speaking and acting as God’s agent.
March 7, 2010 - 12:43 PM
Actually I think McGrath is pretty durn close to O’Neill there. But yeah, great comments, Kaz. Thanks!
March 7, 2010 - 2:19 PM
Hi Thom,
Yeah, the difference between McGrath and O’Neill seems to be primarily one of texture and color. McGrath focuses on the fact that in the ancient world a defining attribute of a “Son” was his obedience and subjection to his father. It would therefore be difficult to justify the notion that “son” would connote equality with the father. He therefore takes the Greek participle ποιῶν as a concessive participle, yielding something like this: “He claimed that God was his father, although [he was] making himself equal with God.” In other words, the Jews’ charge could be paraphrased this way: On the one hand, he claims to be God’s Son, which suggests that he is obedient, but yet here he is making himself equal with God by working on the Sabbath, which would make him a rebellious, disobedient son.
This interpretation easily fits with the notion that it was not “equality with God” that was at the heart of the complaint, but that Jesus “made himself” equal rather than waiting for his Father to reveal his identity as the Messiah. As O’Neill says in his book, “Who Did Jesus Think He Was?”, available evidence seems to suggest that:
“There was a Jewish law which proscribed, on pain of death, the presumptuous blasphemy of anyone’s taking it upon himself to say he was the Messiah until the Father had clearly spoken.” (p. 48)
You can see how O’Neill develops this argument here:
http://preview.tinyurl.com/ydy6n2u
Obviously if there was such a law it was not part of the law given to Moses, but would have been one of the editions or elaborations that emerged later.
While most of O’Neill’s observations in relation to John 5 are sound, his scholarship overall is uneven. For example, he proposes that the text at Philippians 2:6 is corrupt in that a second “not” is missing, and he offers this “restored” translation:
“who being in the form of God thought it not robbery not to be equal with God” (ibid, p. 448)
O’Neill explains what this means:
“That would mean that the one who was in the form of God did not think the express will of God that he should be born as a man to be robbery of his supreme position alongside God; he freely accepted the will of the Father.” (ibid, p. 87)
Well, that at least makes sense. The Son would not have felt that the Father was stealing from him by asking him to give up his heavenly state (I realize that you do not believe that the Son preexisted his life on earth). The biggest problem with O’Neill’s view is that there is no evidence of any kind suggesting that a second “not” was ever present in the text, so I don’t see any reason to adopt his suggested translation.
~Kaz
March 7, 2010 - 2:45 PM
Right. That’s good stuff. Yes, O’Neill is on with John 5, and off with Phil 2, I think. The point of convergence between McGrath and O’Neill is that they both stress that the issue was “making himself” equal to God, as in, setting himself up in God’s place. I actually think their different emphases on “son” aren’t mutually exclusive.
March 7, 2010 - 2:58 PM
I just read a bunch of O’Neill’s book. I think he fundamentally misunderstands some of the concepts of agency and preexistence, based on what I read.
He sure does like to insert words into translations to make his case. I’ve seen him do it twice already in addition to the time you mentioned in Phil 2.
His reading of 1 Cor 15 in chapter 5 also fundamentally misunderstands the fact that it stems out of an Adam christology. He critiques the reading that Christ is dethroned after he hands the kingdom over to the father. He says, “God would not need to share his throne with any Christ in order to get temporary help against enemies, a help to be discarded when the job was done” (80).
But this fundamentally misses the point. This arises out of Paul’s Adam christology. Christ is given a temporary seat on God’s throne in order that humanity will be restored to its rightful place as the head of creation, by bringing all enemies (angelic powers) back into subjection, i.e., back to their original position as having lower rank than humans. It is not because God needs help that God shares his throne with the Messiah/Second Adam. It is precisely so that humanity will be restored that God uses a human representative to judge.
Then, it is not as though the Christ is “dethroned.” It is simply that the time for judgment is over. Now, all humans are exalted to share in the glory of the Christ. Christ is still their king, but he no longer sits on God’s throne of judgment. He now dwells among his people.
March 7, 2010 - 3:00 PM
This pattern in 1 Cor 15 is exactly paralleled in the Similitudes of Enoch, as it happens.
March 7, 2010 - 3:07 PM
I agree that “Son of God”, while a messianic title that suggested great God given authority also connoted obedience. Israel was a disobedient son and God needed an obedient son to effect his purposes. I think that this theme harmonizes well with Richard Hay’s thesis that PISTIS CRISTOU can be rendered “the faith of Jesus Christ” which can make sense vs. the traditional rendering “faith in Jesus Christ”, esp. in places like Romans 3:22.
Is there any chance that you know German? As you know, the person who really jump started the agency paradigm that James F. McGrath, A.E. Harvey, and others have developed is Jan-A Buhner. Unfortunately his important historical work, “Der Gesandte un sein Weg im 4. Evangelium”, is not available in English, and I’d really like to know what he says, esp. in reference to John 8:58 in light of the current thread on James’ blog.
~Kaz
March 7, 2010 - 3:09 PM
I’ll be tackling German in the fall, and I may make use of Buhner for my thesis. It’ll probably be a while.
March 7, 2010 - 3:57 PM
Well, I’ve waited this long so I guess another year or two can’t hurt. FYI, in case you’re interested, John Ashton translates the chapter in Buhner’s book that deals with the EGO EIMI sayings in “The Interpretation of John”, by T&T Clark. You can read most of the chapter here:
http://preview.tinyurl.com/yalsal8
Unfortunately the EGO EIMI saying found at John 8:58 is not developed in this section.
Ashton also translates part of Buhner’s book in “Understanding the Fourth Gospel”, pp. 322 & 323, but these two specific pages are not available on Google Books.
~Kaz