Son of God

¶ … Son of God -- a lasting light and a lasting controversy

Son of God, last your light." "The Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost." The phrases pertaining to the notion of Jesus as the Son of God have become a familiar part of Christian culture, from Christmas carols to the punch lines of jokes, as well as part of Christian theology and liturgy. It is easy to forget the historical development of the title, as well as its theological implications. The notion of Jesus as the unique son of the divinity emerged one of the key, theological divisions between the Christian and the Jewish belief systems of the ancient world. For Jews, notions of being a Son of God were either rhetorical tropes, or diffuse labels for a variety of Biblical figures. Unlike the notion of the Messiah, being the Son of God was not a special status in Judaism. For Christians, Jesus' status as a Son of God was one of the crucial factors that made Jesus a distinct prophetic figure in the emerging, unique Christian religion. Jesus' status as part of God meant that Jesus' intervention and penetration into the mortal world was special in contrast to other persons of the Bible.

Thus the term, "Son of God" is not confined to the Christian Bible. The Jewish tradition that spawned the Christian tradition contains numerous references to sons of God, and all of these phrases have multiple meanings in the original languages of the texts. In Genesis, "Son of God" is a term applied to angels or demigods, as the sons of God who are "mythological beings whose...ill conduct was among the causes of Flood" and thus to be called sons of God is not necessarily a flattering term. The term is also applied "to a judge or ruler...and to the real or ideal king over Israel as well as the children if Israel itself, and sometimes to members of the human race. (Kaufmann & Hirsch, 2002) Christians see such references to the Son of God as the ideal judge as an example of how Jesus' coming to earth is referenced in what is to them the Old Testament, and suggests that Jesus' status as a being that is part of the Father's essence is also manifest in eternity, both before and after Jesus' ministry. But for Jews, this ideal judge is not a reference to Jesus, but to an ideal 'type' of judge, held up as an example for human rulers.

Furthermore, Jewish scholars point out that in "the Hebrew idiom" the phrase used by Jesus to reference his heavenly father "conveys nothing further than a simple expression of godlikeness" and the term "son of God" is rarely used in Jewish literature in the sense of the "Messiah," which is another understanding of Jesus in Christianity that is conjoined to his status as God's only son. While for Christians, the notion of being God's son is directly tied to Jesus' status as the Messiah, in Jewish theology these statuses are not tied, other than the sense that the Messiah is presumably a child of Israel, a powerful and good judge, and therefore a blessed child of God. (Kaufmann & Hirsch, 2002)

Son-ship to God" was ascribed first to every Israelite and then to every member of the human race (Kaufmann & Hirsch, 2002) The phrase "the only begotten son" (John iii. 16) is merely another rendering for "the beloved son," and to be beloved is not the same as to be the only begotten son, as Christians contend that Jesus was the only Son of God, and is part of God. For Christians, the unique status of Jesus as the Son of God remains a crucial division between Judaism and Christianity, and the Jewish and Christian interpretations of the Hebrew Bible.

Indeed, the Catholic theologian C. Aherene concurs with such analysis. "The title 'Son of God' is frequent in the Old Testament. The word 'son' was employed among the Semites to signify not only filiation [parentage], but other close connection or intimate relationship...." (Aherene, 2002) The leaders of the people, kings, princes, judges, as holding authority from God, were called sons of God, because they were like God in their ability to judge humanity with wisdom.

However, Christians like Aherene believe that the Messiah is "the Chosen One, the Elect of God," and thus "was par excellence called the Son of God (Ps. ii, 7)." (Aherene, 2002) In other words, although there may be many metaphorical sons of God in earlier texts other than Jesus, only Jesus is the literal Son of God whose coming is referenced in the Old Testament. In the Christian Bible, Jesus refers to himself as the Son of God, and Christians regard this sense of kinship as having a more significant resonance than other, Hebraic references to the Sons of God because upon the birth of Jesus, in one of the nativity narratives: "The angel announced: "He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the most High... The Holy which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God." (Luke 1:32, 35) (Cited by Aherene, 2002) In Christian understanding, this reference to Jesus as the Son of God marks his kinship with the divine with a special status and significance.

Christians also cite the special, specific nature of Jesus as the Son of God in such New Testament exchanges as in Matthew, where "Simon Peter answered and said: Thou art Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answering, said to him: Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona: because flesh and blood hath not revealed it to thee, but my Father who is in heaven." (Aherene, 2002) This reference in Matthew, xvi, 15, 16 does not embrace both men as sons of God in a more generic sense, but Jesus as the Son of the living God, implying a vital and living kinship between God the Father and God the Son.

But nowhere in the Christian Bible are there more numerous phrases in which Jesus is specifically heralded as the Son of God, than in John's Gospel. Jesus repeatedly draws attention to his relationship with God the Father in such passages as: "My Father worketh until now; and I work.... For the Father loveth the Son, and sheweth him all things which he himself doth: and greater works than these will he shew him, that you may wonder. For as the Father raiseth up the dead, and giveth life: so the Son also giveth life to whom he will. For neither doth the Father judge any man, but hath given all judgment to the Son. That all may honour the Son, as they honour the Father." (Cited by Aherene, 2002, v, 17, 20-23). John sets out the unique duties of Father and Son in this passage, and for Trinitarians, this provides evidence for the existence of a multifaceted, multi 'peopled' divinity with a Father and a Son.

However, not all Christians agree what exactly the relationship between God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are in terms of the Trinity. According to Aherene, a Catholic, "in the minds of the Evangelists,

Jesus Christ" was the Messiah because He was the Son of God, and not the Son of God because He" was the Messiah." (Aherene, 2002) In other words, although kinship between God and Israel were expressed before, in early documents, only Jesus is the Son of God, and only Jesus is the Messiah for all Christians, but for some Christians sects, there is a different emphasis upon the importance of one title over the other. For evangelicals, the world-altering nature of the Messiah, who will bring forth the millennium in the here and now is all-important. For Catholics, who stress a greater continuity and theological tradition with the first Church, the notion of Jesus as the Son of God is most important, because it conjoins the Old and New Testament traditions into one. In contrast with a Catholic interpretation of the phrase The Son of God, one evangelical website defines the evangelical understanding of sonship as thus: "This is a title of nature and not of office. The sonship of Christ denotes his equality with the Father. To call Christ the Son of God is to assert his true and proper divinity." ("Son of God," 2006, Bible Encyclopedia) In other words, the nature of sonship, of bringing about a Messiah-like judgment is what is important in the evangelical emphasis regarding the phrase.