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8

THE SON

One thing is clear. Because Jesus himself addressed Elohim, ho Theos, God, as ho Pater, Abba, Father, Christians have spoken of God as the Father – as the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds, with their "I believe in God the Father almighty. . ." have long declared.  In this chapter we shall continue to reflect upon the implications of Jesus using the word Abba.  Further we shall examine several Christological titles used or given to Jesus in the New Testament.  Hopefully this will lead us into an appreciation of the filial relation of Jesus Christ to the Father.

Serious readers of the four Gospels find it difficult to escape the conclusion that Jesus had a relation to God which is impossible to fit into regular human ways of describing the relation of a man to God.  His disciples sensed this unique relation, relatedness, and relationship of Jesus to the God of their fathers.  Jesus’ relation was not merely that of a prophet to Yahweh-Elohim or of a member of the righteous remnant, the "poor of the Lord," in his

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humility before God; it was different from that of the devoted priest in the temple, waiting upon God in faithful service; and it was not like that of the Pharisee, devoted to God through meticulous obedience to the Law.  In terms of the external manner and events of his ministry, Jesus fits into various categories – prophet, rabbi, miracle-worker, exorcist, and healer.  Yet in terms of his inner life – as reflected in his prayer and in his naming of the living God, Yahweh-Elohim as Abba – Jesus of Nazareth cannot easily be fitted in any category.  In fact, he fits into no obvious category.

Already, in the last chapter, we noted the rare but extremely important occurrences of the Aramaic word, Abba, in the New Testament – on the lips of Jesus and as the cry of the Spirit of Jesus in the hearts of baptized believers.  We recognized that the retention of this Aramaic word within the Greek New Testament pointed to Abba being the word specifically chosen and used by Jesus to express his own, unique relation to the living God, YHWH.  Further, we noticed that the way it is used by the Apostle Paul of the intimate sense of union with the Father of Jesus Christ enjoyed by believers also points to the unique use of this word by Jesus himself (Gal. 4:16; Rom. 8:15).  Paul did not use the word in other places (e.g., doxologies) and, as far as we can tell, the word was not used in any of the early liturgies of the church (i.e., as we know of them via the anonymous Didache and the writings of Justin Martyr and Hippolytus of Rome).

It is possible to see Jesus’ use of Abba as merely reflecting his creativity, independence of thought, boldness of expression, and freedom from Jewish traditionalism.  Certainly there was no precedent in his religious and devotional heritage for calling the God of Jewish monotheism Abba.  However, the wiser and better way is to see in Jesus’ adoption of this startling form of address indications of not only his own true identity, but also the true identity of Yahweh-Elohim.  In fact, one might say that Jesus chose the word Abba because his own relation to, and experience of, the living God could not adequately be expressed in any of the ways of speaking of Elohim/Theos provided in the Jewish Scriptures or the Jewish tradition of worship.

Of course, when he was at the synagogue and in the temple Jesus prayed as a Jew with Jews and used the traditional forms of

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worship and prayer.  Yet, at the personal level, such was his unique relation, relatedness, and relationship to YHWH that he had to create his own verbal expression, using his own vocabulary.  The One whom Jesus addresses as Abba is certainly Yahweh-Elohim and Theos; yet he is known, experienced, and addressed in a more intimate way by Jesus than had ever been the case on earth before.

Without denying the Hebraic and Jewish tradition of prayer and covenantal communion with Yahweh, and without setting aside the Torah, Jesus moves on into new spiritual territory.  For what God was/is to him, God was/is to no one else.  In fact (as later Christology will make clear), Jesus spoke from within Divinity – from inside the Godhead. He experienced fully the divine Filiation.  To pray privately addressing the Deity as Elohim or to Yahweh or to Adonai would have been to pray to himself!  So he prays to Abba as the Son praying to the Father, where both Father and Son together (in the unity of the Holy Spirit) are Yahweh-Elohim, the one unique God, who is a plurality in unity!

The Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels is conscious of a personal intimacy with the Father, knows that YHWH is his Father and Father of his disciples in different but related ways, and is wholly dedicated as the Son-Servant to be the Suffering Servant in absolute obedience to the will of God.  All this is clear in the Gospel of Mark which begins with the statement, "The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God," and then quickly moves to the baptism, where Jesus is told by the Father that he is the Son and his vocation is that of the Suffering Servant.

Obviously, the implications of Jesus’ choice and use of Abba only became clear to his apostles and disciples after his resurrection and after their reception of the gift of the Holy Spirit.  This means that the Gospels were written by those who had this insight and knowledge.  So it is the Synoptic Gospels and Mark in particular (14:36) which provide the clues concerning Jesus’ original use of Abba, as we noticed in the last chapter.  However, being written in Greek they use ho Pater all the time, with Matthew’s Gospel containing the greatest frequency of use of the words "Father" and "Son" in the Synoptics.  In fact, Matthew makes it clear that "Son of God" is the only adequate title of

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Jesus and that to recognize Jesus as truly the Son of God requires divine revelation.  Even Peter the apostle needed illumination from heaven (see Matt. 16:13-17; cf. 27:51-54).  Further, in this Gospel, the sonship of Jesus is presented primarily in terms of obedience to the Father, his readiness to suffer and die in order to fulfill all righteousness (3:15).  Because of this total, loving obedience, the Father raised him from the dead and exalted him, giving him "all authority in heaven and on earth" (28:18).  Now he reigns as the Son (28:19; 24:36) and will return to the earth in glory as the only Son of the Father (10:32; 16:27; 25:31-46).

There are, of course, all kinds of indications in the Gospels that Jesus is unique in his knowing of God.  One such is his relation to the Torah, which he claimed to revise and fulfill as though he were its original giver (Matt. 5).  He acted according to who he is – the maker and therefore the reviser of the Torah.  Further, as Raymond E. Brown, the distinguished Catholic biblical scholar, writes: "Jesus could and did declare sins forgiven, modify the Law of Moses, violate Sabbath ordinances, offend against the proprieties (eat with tax collectors and sinners), make stringent demands (forbid divorce; challenge to celibacy and to leave family ties), defy common sense (encouragement to turn the other cheek) – in short, teach as no teacher of his time taught. . . . Moreover, the certainty with which Jesus spoke and acted implies a consciousness of a unique relationship to God."¹

The kingdom of God (= kingdom of heaven), which was the focal point of his ministry, is never described by Jesus for it is beyond description – ineffable.  Yet all kinds of hints were given by Jesus in his parables and actions for those who had ears to hear. In terms of the perspective of Jesus himself George Tavard writes:

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parables of the kingdom reveal first of all that there exists a realm so far unsuspected, an impenetrable aura of divinity, which no one has ever entered since no one can see God and live, yet of which he, Jesus, can speak, since he belongs to it, and soon will return to it.  But Jesus cannot describe it, cannot even conceptualize it, because no words in any language can formulate this experience of being the Son.

This is the first level, the level into which the prayer to Abba is addressed.  Then there is the second level.

There is, accordingly, another level. . . the kingdom of Elohim, of which Jesus speaks, is the kingdom of himself, of which he is the king, an aura of Divinity around Jesus closely related to what the Old Testament had called the Spirit of God.  This is the kingdom of the One whom the gospel of John calls the Logos, whom Paul calls the Kyrios, of the One who gave the Law, who spoke in the prophets and who sent the Apostles.  Thus the parables of the kingdom are Jesus’ mythical presentation of himself and of his mission on earth.  To say that Jesus has a kingdom is, on the analogy of the Old Testament, to imply the he has a Spirit, that this Spirit seeks those who belong to Jesus and brings them into his joy.²

There are other indications in the Synoptic Gospels of the profound sense enjoyed by Jesus of an intimate communion with the Father in heaven.  In the last chapter we noted some of the recorded words of Jesus where he spoke of his unique relation to the Father (e.g., Matt. 11:27; Mark 12:6; 13:32; Luke 10:22; 20:13).  To these can be added the words Jesus uttered at the age of twelve when he was in the temple in Jerusalem.  Addressing Joseph and Mary who were earnestly and urgently looking for him he said, "How is it that you sought me?  Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?" (Luke 2:49).  Luke’s comment on this early expression of filial consciousness in Jesus is: "And they did not understand the saying which he spoke to them" (v. 50).

When we look at the Synoptic Gospels and ask what further

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evidence within them points to a unique relation of Jesus to Yahweh-Elohim and harmonizes with Jesus’ own sense of Abba, we cannot avoid examining the narratives of the conception and birth of Jesus in Matthew and Luke, and the descriptions of the baptism and Transfiguration in Matthew, Mark, and Luke.  Later we shall return to these important events to seek evidence of the revelation of the Trinity, but here our only concern is with Jesus as the unique Son of the Father.

Though the Matthean and Lucan infancy narratives are very different, they agree on two facts.  First of all, in terms of his human identity, Joseph is his legal father and thus Jesus is of the House of David (Matt. 1:20; Luke 1:27).  In the second place, in terms of his divine identity, he was conceived by Mary without a human father through the unique act of the Holy Spirit (Matt. 1:20; Luke 1:35) – therefore, God is his Father.  So Jesus is Emmanuel (God with us) and God’s Son (Matt. 1:23; Luke 1:32).  We must presume that sooner or later Mary told Jesus that Joseph was not his father.  What Jesus knew innately within himself was surely confirmed by this knowledge of his origins.

The three Synoptic Gospels present us with accounts of both the baptism and the Transfiguration of Jesus.  At the baptism, the beginning of his public ministry, the voice of the Father from heaven tells Jesus that he is "my beloved Son" (Mark 1:11; Matt. 3:17; Luke 3:22); then, again, at the Transfiguration, as he turned his face toward Jerusalem, the city of God, the voice of the Father from heaven tells Moses, Elijah, and the disciples, "This is my beloved Son" (Mark 9:7; Matt. 17:5; Luke 9:35).  Again we have to say that only he to whom and about whom such heavenly words are said could pray in a wholly natural way, Abba.

We possess what we now call the New Testament because the apostles and disciples of Jesus believed that God the Father by the Holy Spirit had raised Jesus of Nazareth from the dead and exalted him into heaven to his right hand.  This message resounds in the early chapters of Acts where we are told of the first preaching in Jerusalem, "This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses...  God has made him both Lord and

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Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified" (2:32, 36).  "The God of our fathers raised Jesus . . . God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins" (5:30-31).

Undoubtedly the Resurrection is the major event in Jesus’ revelation of the divine life, that is, of the full identity of YHWH.  In terms of the revelation of God as Holy Trinity, we may say that the revelation was incidental to, and the inevitable effect of, the accomplishment of redemption – first in the resurrection of the crucified Jesus (who was raised by the Holy Spirit) and then in the gift of the Holy Spirit to the waiting disciples (for which see chapter 9).

The books of the New Testament were certainly written by men who believed that Jesus was truly raised from the dead in a bodily resurrection, left behind an empty tomb, and ascended into heaven in his glorified human nature/body.  Further, the conviction of these authors that the resurrection of Jesus demonstrated that he is truly the Messiah of the Jews, the Son of God, and the Lord resounds through their writings.  Therefore, even the Gospels, as they tell of the ministry of Jesus before his death and resurrection, show that they were written from within a profound faith in the living, exalted Lord Jesus Christ, Messiah, and Son.  This is especially true of the Gospel of John where the full identity of Jesus, known after the Resurrection, is used in a more intense and obvious way to inform the narrative of events and the sayings of Jesus before the crucifixion and Resurrection.

It is because the Gospels were written from within commitment to the exalted, living Lord Jesus, that it is (for modern scholars) exceedingly difficult to determine what impact this faith and knowledge had on the actual reporting of the words and works of Jesus during his public ministry.  So it is not surprising that in academia there has been the "quest for the historical Jesus" – the search for the "Jesus of history" freed from interpretations based on "the Christ of faith."  There are, of course, legitimate and interesting questions raised by biblical scholars concerning whether or not we can ever surely know precisely what Jesus originally knew, felt, and said.  Obviously we are dependent on the memory of faithful disciples for what he said and did; and happily they lived in a culture where accu-

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rate memory was taken for granted.  Yet the impact of the Resurrection, by which the glory of his full identity began to dawn upon them, must have caused them to see in his remembered words and works meaning which was earlier, during the period of the public ministry, far from obvious to them.

It may be claimed that their memory remained accurate but their interpretation of the content of memory enlarged and developed under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.  And it is reasonable to assume that their insight into the full identity of Jesus and the total meaning of his time on earth grew and matured as the days and years went by.  However, admitting all this, we do also need to take into account the basic honesty of the writers of the Gospels as reporters of past words and events – and thus affirm the historical reliability not only of the Synoptic Gospels but also, in a different but complementary way, of the Gospel of John.  The latter was written on its own admission "that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name" (20:31).

In the last chapter, we noted how the word "Father" is used of God as a simile, a metaphor, and in the New Testament only, in a profound literal sense in the Bible.  Here we must also note that the expression, "Son of God," has various meanings in the Bible.  In the Old Testament, as we already noted in chapter 7, both the king (2 Sam. 7:14; Ps. 2:7) and Israel (Ex. 4:22-23; Hosea 11:1) are presented as sons.  Further, angels are also called sons of God (Gen. 6:2; Job 1:6; Dan. 3:25).  In the New Testament the confession of Jesus as "Son of God" is sometimes a way of speaking of Jesus as the Davidic Messiah.  Jesus is raised from the dead, exalted into heaven, and enthroned as the "Son" – in fulfillment of the prophetic words of Psalm 2:7.  For example, in Acts 13 Luke presents Paul as preaching in the synagogue at Antioch of Pisidia.  In his address he said:

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raising Jesus; as also it is written in the second psalm, "Thou art my Son, today I have begotten thee" (Acts 13:32-33).

Here Paul is certainly thinking of the enthronement of Jesus as the Son through his exaltation from death to the right hand of the Father in heaven.  Psalm 2:7 is seen as being fulfilled.  It is not clear whether or not there is also the further insight (which becomes clear in other places in Paul’s writings) that he is the Son of God before the Resurrection and that his being raised is a demonstration of his sonship.

When we turn to the Gospel of John we find the teaching that Jesus is the Son of God in a profound, ultimate, and unsurpassable sense.  The poetic opening of the Gospel proclaims the Logos who was God in the beginning (1:1) and became flesh "and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth . . . the only Son from the Father" (1:14); toward the end of the Gospel, Thomas, one of the Twelve, addresses Jesus as "my Lord and my God" (20:28).  In between these statements Jesus is presented as being supremely conscious of his filial relation to the Father as the unique Son of the Father.  For example, on the eve of his glorification in Crucifixion (and Exaltation) he told his disciples: "I came from the Father and have come into the world; again, I am leaving the world and going to the Father" (16:28); and he prayed: "Father, glorify thou me in thy own presence with the glory which I had with thee before the world was made" (17:5).

As the Son, Jesus is presented in the Gospel of John as perfectly obeying the will of his Father both in his coming into the world to be incarnate and in his vocation as the Messiah (4:34; 5:30; 6:38; 7:28; 8:42).  Further, Jesus is the One who uniquely shares the work of the Father, specifically including those deeds which God alone can do – judging (5:22, 27-29; 8:16) and giving life to the dead (5:21, 24; 6:40).  In fact, Jesus says and does nothing unless he has first heard or seen it from the Father (3:32-34; 12:49-50).  As the Son, Jesus does the will and the work of the Father because of the unique communion he has with the Father, whom he knows intimately and with whom he is one (1:18; 4:22-23; 6:45-47; 14:13-16; 17:1-5).  The unity of the Father and the Son is seen in the holy love of the Father for the Son

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and the Son for the Father (10:17; 14:31; 17:23).

Jesus is the only Son; he is one of a kind.  Certainly his Father has children through divine grace (1:12), but his Father has one and only one Son.  This unique status of Jesus and this unique relation with the Father is communicated by the constant use of the definite article – the Son of the Father – in the Gospel of John.  God requires that people come to the Son, believe the Son, and obey the Son and honor the Son (3:36; 5:23; 14:6) in order to receive salvation (5:34) and eternal life (6:40, 47) from the Father and become his children, begotten by his grace.

The preexistence of the Word/the Son (who as the Incarnate God is Jesus of Nazareth) is also made clear in the Gospel of John through the words ego eimi (with no predicate) spoken by Jesus.  Though in ordinary Greek these words often mean "It is I" or "I am the one," in John’s Gospel the meaning is to be fixed through their particular use in the Greek Bible, the Septuagint. Let us first note the significant occurrences of ego eimi without a predicate:

You will die in your sins unless you believe that I AM (8:24).

When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I AM (8:28).

Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM (8:58).

When it does take place you may believe that I AM (13:19).

Jesus said [to the soldiers], "I AM" (18:5).

Other places where the "I am" of Jesus has the predicate (e.g., when he says he is the good Shepherd, the Light of the world, and so on) are significant; but, they are not of the same profound significance as those without the predicate.

In saying "I AM" and not supplying a predicate, Jesus is speaking in the same way as YHWH speaks in Isaiah 40–55.  The Hebrew for "I YHWH" or "I He" is translated in the Septuagint

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simply as ego eimi, and since the predicate is not present, the translation into Greek puts particular emphasis upon existing – the existence of God.  Thus in the Hebrew YHWH says ’ani hu’ and in the Greek he says ego eimi (see Isa. 41:4; 43:10; 43:25; 46:4; 51:12; 52:6).  This way of speaking is to be traced back to Exodus 3:14, where YHWH tells Moses to declare in Egypt that, "I AM has sent me [Moses] to you [Pharaoh]."  Commenting on this usage, the Swedish professor Tryggve Mettinger writes: "When Jesus proclaims his ‘I AM,’ he is unambiguously playing on a formula that recalls the Old Testament text about the revelation of the divine Name.  In other words, when a reader of the Bible puts himself in the vantage point of the New Testament ‘I AM’ expressions and looks backwards to the Old Testament, he sees a line of tradition back to Exodus 3:14.  But there is another kind of flashback to Isaiah 40–55."³  Thus the Father is YHWH and Jesus, the Son of the Father, is YHWH.  The rich unity of YHWH has a plurality.

It would be wrong for us to assume that John invented the absolute use of the "I AM," for there are hints of it in the Synoptic Gospels.  For example, both Mark and Matthew describe Jesus walking across the water to his disciples and saying to his disciples, "Ego eimi, take heart, have no fear" (Matt. 14:27; Mark 6:50; and cf. John 6:20).  Though (as we noted above) the Greek may be translated as "It is I" (as in the RSV here and in John 6:20), that the full "I AM" is intended is suggested by the response of the disciples in the boat, "Truly you are the Son of God" (Matt. 14:33).  Then, of course, the same Gospel of Matthew contains the command of Jesus that converts be baptized in the Name (YHWH) of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit (28:19).

Another book of the New Testament which proclaims that Jesus is Son of God in himself, and not merely Son because of being the enthroned Messiah-Son, is Hebrews.  The main theme of 1:1–3:6 is the superiority of Jesus both to the angels and to Moses.  He is superior because he is the Son of God, through

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whom the Father created and sustains the universe.  God the Father has spoken "to us by a Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.  He reflects the glory of God and bears the very stamp of his nature, upholding the universe by his word of power" (1:2-3).  Of this Son, Scripture not only says (in Ps. 2:7) "You are my Son, today I have begotten you," but also (in Ps. 45:6) "Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever" (KJV).  From earth by faith believers confess that "we see Jesus, who for a little while was made lower than the angels [in his incarnate existence on earth], crowned with glory and honor" (Heb. 2:9).

The Apostle Paul calls Jesus "the Son of God" on four occasions (Rom. 1:4; 2 Cor. 1:9; Gal. 2:20; Eph. 4:13), and on thirteen occasions he speaks of Jesus’ divine sonship in such expressions as "his Son" (Rom. 1:3, 9; 5:10; 8:3, 29, 32; 1 Cor. 1:9; 15:28; Gal. 1:16; 4:4, 6; Col. 1:13; 1 Thes. 1:10).  It is of interest and theological importance that in all of his seventeen references to the divine sonship of Jesus Paul uses the definite article (which is not always obvious in the English translations).  For example, in Romans 1:3 the literal translation is "the Son of him" which the RSV renders as "his Son."  By this grammatical means Paul declares that the sonship of Jesus is unique – he is one of a kind.  Paul’s calling was to proclaim "the Son of him [God the Father]" among the Gentiles (Gal. 1:15-16).  The Gospel is the Gospel of God concerning his Son, the Royal Son (Rom. 1:4), the Sacrificed Son (Rom. 8:32), and the Son in and through whom God adopts sons through his grace (Gal. 4:5).

In chapter 7 we noted that theos (elohim) meaning "God" is normally used of the Father in the New Testament.  However, there are several times in the New Testament where Jesus Christ is certainly called, and several when he is apparently called, theos, and these we must now examine.  We cannot here go into the complex issues of textual variants and syntax, which are raised by the full study of whether and where Jesus is called theos by the writers of the New Testament.  Happily a recent book, Jesus as God: The New Testament Use of Theos in Refer-

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ence to Jesus, by the erudite, conservative scholar, Murray J. Harris, covers the technical evidence more than adequately.  We shall examine the occurrences as they appear in the order of the books of the New Testament.

(1) "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (John 1:1).

(2) "No one has ever seen God; the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known" (John 1:18).  (Instead of "the only Son" we perhaps should read "the only God" or "the only-begotten who is God" for this has superior textual support.)

(3) "Thomas answered [Jesus], ‘My Lord and My God!’" (John 20:28)

(4) ".. . and of their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ. God who is over all be blessed for ever" (Rom. 9:5).  (Here the RSV follows the Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus, where a full stop or period is put after flesh.  If a full stop is put only after "for ever" and a comma is placed after "Christ" then it reads, ". . . the Christ according to the flesh, who is over all God blessed for ever.")

(5) ". . . awaiting our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ" (Titus 2:13).

(6) "But of the Son he says, ‘Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever’" (Heb. 1:8).

(7) "To those who have obtained a faith of equal standing with ours in the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ" (2 Peter 1:1).

(8) ". . . in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life" (1 John 5:20).

Of these it may be said that three (1, 3, and 6) contain reasonably sure statements that Jesus is theos.  In four of the rest (4, 5, 7, and 8) it is possible but unlikely that theos refers to God

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the Father, while in one (2) it is a matter of which textual variant is followed.

What seems clear is that the readiness and tendency to call Jesus theos belongs to the latter part of the apostolic age – Romans 9:5 being the earliest possible calling of Jesus theos.  We know that early in the second century Ignatius of Antioch freely called Jesus theos, as his Letters reveal.  Further, in the same period the Roman Pliny described the Christians in one of his reports to Rome as those who sang "a hymn to Christ as God."⁴

There are good reasons for thinking that in the first decades of Christianity the Old Testament heritage dominated the use and meaning of theos.  Only the Father in heaven, the One to whom Jesus prayed, could be theos.  However, by the 50s and 60s of the Christian era, theos began to be used in a fuller, even richer way to reflect the conviction that God had been fully revealed in Jesus.  Theos now included both the Father and his Son, and so the Son could also be called theos.  It is perhaps worthy of note that of the eight texts cited above the majority belong to the spirit and content of worship.  The calling of Jesus theos must have occurred and developed – as Pliny indicates – in worship, where Jesus is addressed as "God-and-Savior."

When Paul called Christ "the image (eikon) of God" the emphasis is upon the equality of the image with the original.  The meaning is that Christ shares in God’s real Being and is therefore a perfect manifestation of that Being.  In 2 Corinthians 4:4 Paul writes of "the glory of Christ, who is the likeness of God."  In commenting on this verse Philip E. Hughes wrote:

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ment with reference to the Second Person of the Holy Trinity.  This conclusion is drawn from the context – a context which speaks (3:7ff.) of the divine glory reflected from the face of Moses but veiled from the people because of their unbelief, and which declares that the divine glory now beams forth, unreflected and unveiled, from the face of Jesus Christ and in the gospel of God’s grace, but with transcendent brilliance.  The glory of Christ is not a mere reflection or copy of the glory of God; it is identical with it.⁵

This biblical language of image and glory is dynamically equivalent to the "consubstantial" language of the Creed.

In Colossians 1:13-15 Paul writes of God’s beloved Son in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.  This Son is "the image of the invisible God."  Again, we can benefit from the words of Dr. Hughes.

In the nature of the case, there can be no such thing as a pictorial copy of the invisible; consequently, the term "image" does not mean here simply a visible likeness other than the reality itself.  Within the mystery of the infinite trinitarian being of God it is the Son who authentically reveals the divine nature and gives effect to the divine will.  Certainly, he does this as the incarnate Son in the perfection of his life and his performance of the work of redemption.  He is the image, however, not just temporarily, during the time of his incarnate manifestation here on earth, but eternally; for, as St. Paul goes on to say in this same passage, it was through him and for him who is the image of the invisible God that all things were created (vv. 16f.).⁶

The underlying idea of the image is the manifestation of the hidden and thus Christ is the manifestation of the invisible God. Mankind is not the image of God; rather human beings are made in the image of God.  Only Jesus Christ is truly and really the eternal eikon of God, the Father.  As the eikon of God, the Son became man to identify fully with man who is originally created in (not as) the image of God.

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In three other places, Paul uses the word eikon in a significant way pointing to the renewal of man through being conformed to the image of the Son of God (Rom. 8:29; 1 Cor. 15:49; Col. 3:10).  Made in the image of God but marred through sin, man is renewed in Jesus Christ who is the image of God in which man was first formed!

Related in meaning to eikon is the word morph, used by Paul in the important Christological passage, Philippians 2:5-11, where he speaks of the preexistent Christ as being "in the form of God" before he took the "form of a servant."  The contrast of the heavenly and earthly existence suggests that morph points to a participation in God which is real, just as partaking in human life and history was real for Jesus.  In fact, the meaning is much like that of John 1:1-5, where John speaks of the preexistent Word who became flesh.

Jesus is certainly addressed and described as kyrios in the New Testament.  But what does kyrios mean?  Does it have one or a variety of meanings, depending on the context?  What we know for sure is that the word kyrios was used in Greek in a variety of ways – for example, as a master (owner of slaves), as a polite expression ("Sir"), as a title of gods and heroes, and a title of the Roman Emperor.  So shades of these meanings occur throughout the New Testament, for example, in the parables and ministry of Jesus.

Further, scholars are not sure whether in the versions of the Septuagint available in the first century of the Christian era YHWH was usually rendered by Kyrios.  The earliest major preserved copies of the Septuagint that we possess were prepared by Christians in the fourth and fifth centuries.  These certainly use Kyrios for YHWH. In fact, kyrios occurs about 8,400 times, and of these 6,700 are substitutes for the tetragram, YHWH.

Bearing this in mind, it is not in the least surprising that the Father is often called, ho kyrios, "the Lord," in the New Testament – for example, in expressions such as "the angel of the Lord" (Matt. 1:20, 24) and "the name of the Lord" (James 5:10), as well as in the expression, "the Lord God" (Rev. 22:5-6).  How-

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ever, Kyrios is used as a title of Jesus in all the books of the New Testament except Titus and 1–3 John.

The early Christian confession, "Jesus is Lord" (1 Cor. 12:3; Rom. 10:9), which Paul inherited from Palestinian Christianity, obviously celebrates Jesus as kyrios in a religious sense as the risen and exalted agent of God, by whom comes salvation, and to whom allegiance is owed and given.  Paul himself continued to use kyrios in the absolute sense of the exalted Jesus in his lordship over both the old and new creations – "for us there is. . . one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist" (1 Cor. 8:6).

About 100 times Paul simply calls Jesus "the Lord" (ho kyrios) without any other name or title, suggesting perhaps that he received this shorthand name and form of address from Jewish Christianity (from the Aramaic, marya’; and see also the use of Maranatha, "Lord come" in 1 Cor. 16:22).  Certainly Jesus is Lord in the sense that he is the Master who is to be served and obeyed with an allegiance which is offered only to God (Rom. 14:1-12).  He is also the Lord in the sense that it is he who will appear to judge the world on "the Day of the Lord" (1 Cor. 4:1-5).  Thus he acts as YHWH, the Judge.  Also he is the Lord who is worshiped in the assembly of Christians, when they meet at the Lord’s Table on the Lord’s Day (1 Cor. 11:17-22).  At the end of the age the whole created order will confess to the glory of God the Father that Jesus is the one and only Kyrios (Phil. 2:9-11).  So for Paul to call Jesus ho kyrios was to identify him in the closest possible way with YHWH, the LORD, and in so doing also identify Jesus in the closest possible way with God the Father, who is YHWH.  Thus, to change the title, he is truly the Son of God.

Apparently very early Christos, a verbal adjective used as a noun, became a proper name or title for Jesus, which Paul received from Christians before him (see 1 Cor. 15:3) and often used.  Obviously its early and general use indicated that the first Christians believed that Jesus was the Messiah of Israel and that his resurrection and exaltation proved this to be so.  Paul added to this understanding the confession that Christ is also "God

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blessed forever" – as we saw above in looking at Romans 9:5.

Another indication that for Paul the name of Christ suggests deity is his constant use of the phrase "in Christ" (en Christo).  It occurs about 170 times in the letters and means much more than the word, Christianos, which he does not use at all.  For Paul, all baptized believers are "in Christ"; it is only as they are "in Christ" that they can approach the Father, possess the gift of the Spirit, be the adopted sons of God, receive salvation and enter the church which is the body of Christ.  All this indicates that Paul thought of Christ as a divine Person in whom all believers everywhere dwell and the One who also dwells by his Spirit in all believers.

The phrase, "Son of Man," is used more often in the Gospels than any other name or title except Jesus, and with one exception (John 12:34) only Jesus speaks of the "Son of Man."  Much research and debate among scholars has occurred in the attempt to locate the origin and meaning of this title.  It seems generally agreed that in it there is a reference to the "Son of Man" of Daniel 7, who comes from heaven and is therefore, in some sense, divine.  However, the actual form of words of the title (see Mark 2:10, 28) also points to manhood – a male man, his father’s son.  Thus this title conveys the truth that Jesus is both human and divine.  As Son of Man he has authority – to forgive sins, as lord of the Sabbath, and as ruler in the kingdom of God.  As Son of Man he will come in majesty and glory to judge the people – a coming which stands in contrast to his first coming with its betrayal, rejection, mockery, and injustice, leading to execution and death.  The Son of God is the Son of Man for he was incarnate and thus is both God and man.

Finally there is the title, the Word (logos).  Again there has been much academic interest in the Hellenistic and Jewish background to this word as it is used in the prologue of the Gospel of John.  Wherever, precisely, the inspiration for the use of Logos came from its meaning in the Gospel of John is clear.  The Word is the Person within the Godhead (the only Son) through whom the world was created, who is the source of light and life for mankind and who became flesh that men might become the children of God by grace.  In some way the Logos is the actual personification of the word and wisdom of God (see chap. 5).

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Jesus, the Word, is the express declaration of the divine mind.  He is God’s utterance to man.  He is the Revealer of the will and character of God. He declares, utters, and reveals the Truth!

Whether Jesus is confessed as "the Son," or "the Lord" or "the Christ," or "the Son of Man," it is clear from the total witness of the New Testament that he is seen as God in the flesh, God with a human nature and body.  Further, it is clear that early Christians loved, served, and worshiped him as God incarnate, and did so without in any way setting aside their monotheism, their commitment to YHWH.  In worshiping the Father through the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, they acclaimed the Son as in, with, and through him they praised the Father.

Because of the pressure from feminists today, there is a growing tendency in Christian worship to reduce or take out of the prayers, hymns, and sermons the naming of Jesus as "the Lord," and "the Son," and "the King."  In their place are put such words as "Servant" and "Child" so as to avoid charges of sexism and androcentricism.  Any careful student of the New Testament knows that to do this kind of thing is to run the risk of losing the heart of the Faith.  For it is in the relation of "the Father and the Son" and "the Son and the Father" that the true identity of Jesus is known and salvation is available.  To take away the words is also to take away the reality.  Christian Trinitarian Theism comes from the Scripture with a specific vocabulary and to change this is to lose that unique monotheism and drift into other forms of belief in God (where "God" becomes grammatically neuter in gender and pantheist in meaning!).

As we observed in chapter 3, the key word which the early church used to establish the full and true deity of Jesus as the only Son of the only Father was homoousios, meaning consubstantial with the Father.  In so doing the church rejected Arianism, the teaching that Jesus is an inferior form of deity.  The paragraph of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed concerning Jesus reads:

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light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made, of one substance (homoousios) with the Father, through Whom all things came into existence, Who because of us men and because of our salvation came down from heaven, and was incarnate from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and became man, and was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, and suffered and was buried, and rose again on the third day according to the Scriptures and ascended into heaven, and sits on the right hand of the Father, and will come again, with glory, to judge both the living and the dead, of Whose kingdom there will be no end.⁷

Once the deity of Jesus had been established the next major question to answer was the relation within the one Person of the Son, Jesus Christ, of his divine and human natures.  Guidelines for answering this question in line with the witness of the New Testament and the Nicene Creed were provided by the Council of Chalcedon (451) in this Declaration:

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This doctrine entered into the western Athanasian Creed (the Quicunque Vult) and was further refined at the ecumenical Councils of Constantinople (in 553 and 680).  Those who desire to maintain that Jesus is one and one only Person, and that he is truly and really God and truly and really man, return often to this statement in order to keep their thinking biblically and patristically orthodox.

Since Jesus Christ, One Person made known in two natures, was filled with the Holy Spirit (in his human nature) and consubstantial with the Father and the Holy Spirit (in his divine nature) his relation to the Holy Spirit belongs both to the very center of both the Trinity and the work of human salvation.  Therefore, having studied the identity and nature of the Father and the Son, it is now necessary and appropriate to turn, in the next chapter, to the study of the Holy Spirit.

Brown, Raymond E. An Introduction to New Testament Christology. New York: Paulist, 1994.

Cullman, Oscar. The Christology of the New Testament. London: SCM, 1959.

Dunn, J.D.G. Christology in the Making. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1980.

Hughes, Philip E. The True Image: The Origin and Destiny of Man in Christ. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989.

Jeremias, Joachim. New Testament Theology: The Proclamation of Jesus. New York: Scribner’s, 1971.

Kramer, W. Christ, Lord, Son of God. London: SCM, 1966.

Harris, Murray J. Jesus as God: The New Testament Use of Theos in Reference to Jesus. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1992.

Mettinger, Tryggve N.D. In Search of God: The Meaning and Message of the Everlasting Names. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988.

Toon, Peter. Yesterday, Today and Forever: Jesus Christ and the Holy Trinity in the Teaching of the Seven Ecumenical Councils. Swedesboro, N.J.: Preservation, 1995.

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