THE SON OF GOD – WHAT DOES IT MEAN?
Christianity teaches that Jesus Christ was the Son of God. This doctrine is
taught by all four gospels.
In Matthew 16, Jesus asks his apostles who they believe he is. Peter answers. He
tells him that he is the Christ the Son of God. Jesus says he is right and that
God has revealed it. When Jesus was baptised in the Jordan River by the Baptist
God was supposed to have said that Jesus was his dearly beloved Son.
What does the title, the Son of God, mean? It’s THE Son, not a Son so it denotes
something unique and special.
According to mainstream Christian dogma, God is one being who exists as three
equal and distinct persons. The Father is the First Person, the Son is the
Second and the Holy Spirit is the Third. The Son comes from the Father and the
Holy Spirit comes from the two of them although none of the three started to
exist but always existed. So if the Son becomes a man it follows that this man
is the Son of God even if he had a human father. Calling yourself the Son of God
would mean that you are claiming to be God on this understanding. Jesus,
however, even if he did accept the three in one doctrine might have meant
something else by calling himself the Son of God. And if the Holy Spirit
proceeds from the Father and the Son it follows that he is the Son of the Father
and the Son which proves the Trinity, as stated by the Christians, to be lunacy.
(The early Church erred in giving the Second Person of the Trinity the name, God
the Son, as if he were the only one.) But anyway, if the three are the one being
then whatever one does all do. Do they have three wills that work in union?
The Church says they have one will for they are one being. It follows that if
Jesus believed in the Trinity he would have had to claim to have been three
persons incarnate at the same time for three wills mean three God’s so there can
be one will.
Christians explain that God is not three persons but three “persons” and even
admit that three persons in the sense we take persons cannot be one God (page
50, Jehovah’s Witnesses). They are not persons like us but persons is the best
word we have to describe them though it is inaccurate. If so, then Jesus is not
the Son in the proper sense. It too means something inscrutable and mysterious.
But Jesus claimed to be the Son in the sense intended by the Old Testament which
was not that sense but in the sense of a unique and special and holy creation of
God. The Jews and their scriptures called God Father in the sense of being maker
and kindly sustainer of all. Jesus did not think he was God the Son.
The Bible does not say the three are “persons” so Trinitarian theology is a
man-made solution to a possible contradiction in the Bible.
Some cults and sects say that if Jesus said he was the Son of God that he meant
that he had no human father, that God was his father in the sense that he
miraculously caused the conception without sperm. Perhaps. But the Bible does
not actually teach this understanding.
The Son of God might be the title for the person who is next to God, God’s right
hand man on earth. He is the child of God in the same sense as everybody else
but is called the unique son because of his inimitable or flawless sanctity. The
Jews called lots of holy men the son of God (page 40, The Metaphor of God
Incarnate).
The Son of God could simply be a man who was adopted by God as a Son but this
would imply that nobody else can be adopted.
Haley says that there is no contradiction between the Bible calling Jesus the
only son of God and saying we are sons for it means that Jesus was the only
begotten Son of God in the Christian Trinity sense and we are only adopted (page
109). But we are begotten even more than Jesus would be. Christians say that
Jesus is caused by the Father even though both are God and equal. God caused God
the same being but begetting causes another being. When God makes us he begets
us so the doctrine that we are not begotten is an error even if Jesus, as man,
was made too. Jesus denied he was God when he said he was the Son of God.
The Gospels lie when they say that Jesus called himself the Son of God. He was
given the title and Jesus himself did not call himself son of God in any unique
or exceptional way. He would have had no problem with others claiming to be a
son of God.
Jesus believed that since God comes first, anybody who claims to have a unique
prophetic relation to God or to be God needs to prove it by stupendous miracles
and Jesus allegedly stated that the resurrection was that miracle. So when Jesus
stated that the greatest man ever born was John the Baptist and that nobody was
ever greater than John before the resurrection happened it follows that Jesus
was including himself as well as an inferior to the Baptist. To exclude himself
would have been arrogant and premature. The Baptist was an apocalyptic prophet
who did no miracles and still he was better. If anybody was the Son of God it
was the Baptist and there were early sects that believed that about John. But if
John was not the Son of God then Jesus even less so.
Bible critics declare that Jesus never claimed to be the Son of God. They seem
to think that because Jesus did not broadcast it more that they are right. But
the gospels do not say that he didn’t at least at the later part of the
ministry. Jesus swore those who believed he was Son of God to secrecy. The
gospels leave lots of details out. Since they said that Jesus was God’s Son they
might have sensed no need to report him broadcasting it. But that is
speculation. In any case, we have to go by the writings. The most likely
position is that Jesus did not claim to be the Son of God.
Jesus’ favourite title was the Son of Man. This title implies that he was
nothing more than a man and used this title to emphasise that. But some claim,
including Lee Strobel in The Case for Christ (page 30), that because Daniel 7:13
speaks of one coming before God like a son of man that Jesus was claiming to be
divine! But all Daniel says is that a being came before God like a son of man or
like a man or in the image of a man. And that being got the power to rule under
God. Nothing indicates that the title denotes divinity or that the being was
divine. Son of man is ben adam in Hebrew which not only means man but a man (SON
OF MAN, Biblical Dictionary and Concordance, NAB). There is no evidence that
Jesus was even thinking about the figure in Daniel when he used the title. He
did use the imagery of Daniel at his trial but that may have been the first time
he started using Daniel’s application of it to mean a being who would get great
power from God. By the way Strobel thinks Jesus doing miracles on his own
authority proved he was God for the power came from God and only God could
decide how to use the power. This is a lie because God could give Jesus power to
do as he wished without Jesus being God.
The Bible never teaches the Catholic notion that Son of God as in a person that
emanates from God and is God. And if God is able to project a replica of himself
within himself that does not mean that Son is the right name for the end result.
Parent 1 and Parent 2 would be better.
There is no evidence that Son of God in the Bible makes Jesus out to be God.