The message of the angel Gabriel recorded in Luke 1:35 has proven to be an embarrassment to the traditional understanding of the nature of Jesus: Gabriel says nothing at all to support the idea — held by churches as the hallmark of orthodoxy for centuries — that Jesus was the eternal Son of the Father giving up his existence in heaven in order to become man.
The doctrine of the Incarnation which has dominated Christian thinking since the fourth century is strangely absent from the thinking of Luke who records for us the miraculous conception of Jesus, the Messiah. Luke says not a word about any preexistence of the Savior. He actually contradicts the long-held notion that the conception of Jesus was not his beginning, but only a continuation of life in a different, earthly form.
The tension between tradition and what Scripture reports in Luke 1:35 is fully recognized by leading theologians. It is time for Bible readers to reflect on this extraordinary difference between what Gabriel and Luke taught and what has been received as biblical — often without the exercise of intelligent questioning and examination.
Here is Gabriel’s announcement to Mary about the distinguished Son she is going to bear:
“The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow you; and for this reason your offspring will be called holy, the Son of God.”
As all recognize, this was a divine communication letting Mary know that she had been chosen as mother of the long-promised Savior-Messiah. She was to understand that her pregnancy would be initiated by miracle. Consequently — as a direct result of God’s intervention — her child would be “holy, the Son of God.”
Objections to Traditional Teaching About an Eternal Son
According to cherished views about the nature of Jesus, his Sonship dates not from around 3 BC but from eternity. This has been the core belief of Christendom for nearly 1600 years. He has always been the Son of God, just as he has always existed. As eternal Son he was the Second Member of the Triune Godhead.
It is surprising that Bible readers concern themselves so little with the business of verifying this cardinal tenet of their faith. Orthodox commentators on the Bible are often refreshingly honest in admitting that no such doctrine of eternal Sonship is to be found in Scripture.
Writing as a Trinitarian, James O. Buswell, once dean of graduate faculty, Covenant College and Seminary, St. Louis, states:
“The notion that the Son was begotten by the Father in eternity past, not as an event, but as an inexplicable relationship, has been accepted and carried along in Christian theology since the fourth century...We have examined all the instances in which ‘begotten’ or ‘born’ or related words are applied to Christ, and we can say with confidence that the Bible has nothing whatsoever to say about ‘begetting’ as an eternal relationship between the Father and the Son” (Systematic Theology, p. 111).
According to this theologian there is a complete absence of any biblical support for the dogmatic teaching “accepted and carried along since the fourth century” that Jesus was the Son of God before his conception. If so, then the central doctrine of the Incarnation of the preexisting eternal Son of God has been a vast mistake, a perversion of Scripture.
Such statements as Dr. Buswell’s ought to alert us to the danger of accepting from tradition, without careful search in the Bible, a notion about Jesus affecting so drastically his relationship to the Father and his identity as a man. It must be obvious that a person whose divine Sonship begins in the womb of his mother is of a different class from one who has throughout all eternity past been the Son of God. This latter idea is the main prop of the doctrine of the Trinity.
A well-known commentator, Dr. Adam Clark, also finds no hint of the doctrine of the eternal Sonship of Jesus in the Bible. Commenting on Luke 1:35 (cited above) he says:
“We may plainly perceive here, that the angel does not give the appellation of Son of God to the divine nature of Christ; but to that holy person or thing (‘to agion’) which was to be born of the virgin by the energy of the Holy Spirit...Here I trust I may be permitted to say, with all due respect to those who differ from me, that the doctrine of the eternal Sonship of Christ is, in my opinion, antiscriptural and highly dangerous; this doctrine I reject...”
The learned Doctor goes on to give five reasons why the idea of Jesus’ eternal Sonship is both non-biblical and impossible. We cite the last of these:
“Fifthly. To say that he was begotten from all eternity is in my opinion absurd; and the phrase eternal Son is a positive self-contradiction. Eternity is that which has no beginning, nor stands in any reference to time. Son supposes time, generation and Father: and time also antecedent to such generation. Therefore the conjunction of these two terms, Son and eternity, is absolutely impossible, as they imply essentially different and opposite ideas.”
Adam Clark was joined in his objections to this main pillar of orthodoxy by two other theologians. Professor Stewart stated:
“The generation of the Son as divine [i.e. before his birth], as God, seems to be out of the question: unless it be an express doctrine of revelation: which is so far from being the case, that I conceive the contrary is plainly taught.”
A fellow scholar, Dr. Watts, the famous hymn writer who abandoned Trinitarianism, added his opinion:
“I know no text which gives Christ, considered as God, the title, ‘the Son.’”
Another voice of protest comes to us from the seventeenth century. The celebrated poet, John Milton, was known for his opposition to traditional dogma. In his Treatise on the Son of God and the Holy Spirit (p. 4) he wrote:
“It is impossible to find a text in all Scripture to prove the eternal generation of the Son.”
Without an eternal Son of God, the Trinity collapses. Sir Isaac Newton and John Locke labored likewise to expose the impossible concept of an “eternally begotten Son.”
Contemporary Objections
Distinguished Roman Catholic commentators of the present time do not find any teaching about eternal Sonship in Luke’s record of Gabriel’s visitation to Mary:
“In the commentary I shall stress that Matthew and Luke show no knowledge of preexistence; seemingly for them the conception was the beginning (begetting) of God’s Son” (Raymond E. Brown, S.S., The Birth of the Messiah, p. 31).
He speaks of Luke’s and Matthew’s accounts of the origin of Jesus:
“God’s creative action in the conception of Jesus...begets Jesus as God’s Son. Clearly here divine sonship is not adoptive sonship, but there is no suggestion of an Incarnation, whereby a figure who was previously with God takes on flesh” (Ibid., p. 141).
Raymond Brown gives us a minute examination of Luke 1:35 and explodes the whole notion that Luke thought of Jesus as the Son of God prior to his conception. Luke, the historian and theologian, has most carefully documented the truly orthodox view of the beginning of Jesus Christ. The truth is found in the precise wording of Luke’s account of Gabriel’s message to Mary, which we now examine again.
The Causal Link
Here is the critically important information about Jesus given to Mary by the angel. In response to Mary’s question about her impending motherhood, Gabriel responded:
“The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and power from the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore the child to be born will be called holy — Son of God.”
Raymond Brown comments on the important word “therefore”:
“It involves a certain causality...[which] has embarrassed many orthodox theologians, since in preexistence Christology a conception by the Holy Spirit in Mary’s womb does not bring about the existence of God’s Son. Luke is seemingly unaware of such a Christology; conception is causally related to divine sonship for him” (Ibid., p. 291).
The critical point is this: Luke, reporting the angel’s words, gives the reason and basis for Jesus being the Son of God. It is because of the supernatural intervention by God which creates a miracle in Mary’s womb. It is this which brings into being the Son of God. He is to be holy because he is the creation of God acting through the Holy Spirit. The divine sonship of Jesus is traced to a historical event, the virginal conception, which took place in Mary. Luke thereby rules out a Sonship which has existed for all eternity past. Luke, therefore, did not believe in the doctrine of the Trinity!
Noting the striking difference between Luke’s understanding of the Sonship of Jesus and the view which became orthodox in post-biblical times, Raymond Brown refers to the work of another Roman Catholic theologian. The latter notices the discomfort felt by commentators who find it impossible to square the words of Luke with the traditional view about an eternal Son.
Footnotes Which Deserve to Be Headlines
In a long treatise on “The Annunciation and Biblical Mariology” (p. 59), the Jesuit theologian P.S. Lyonnet remarks that:
“The first principle of interpretation is to recognize and make clear what the writer meant.”
He follows with a section entitled, “What Luke certainly affirmed.” What Luke says of Jesus is that his miraculous birth will give joy to the world and that he will be great and charged with an important mission from God. He will derive holiness from the moment of his conception.
“It is because Jesus is to be conceived by a virgin mother, in whom the Holy Spirit will be uniquely present. It is for that reason (‘that is precisely why’) the child will be called holy, the Son of God...the causal link is emphasized.”
In a footnote deserving the widest press (fn. 6, p. 61) Lyonnet then speaks of the difficulty — indeed embarrassment — which Luke causes many theologians. They try to reconcile Luke’s view of the origin of Jesus with what they have accepted as orthodoxy:
“Most modern exegetes, finding in Luke’s statement a disagreement with their theology, attempt to give to the word ‘therefore’ an interpretation which eliminates or weakens this ‘embarrassing’ causal link.”
In other words these exegetes add to Luke’s statement a thought which is not there, namely that the virginal conception will only make known what is already a fact: the already existing eternal Sonship of the Savior. That is not at all what Luke believed.
Raymond Brown agrees with his colleague Lyonnet that such efforts at side-stepping the obvious intention of Luke are unsuccessful.
What we see here is a clash of two systems, the biblical and post-biblical definitions of the Son of God.
“I cannot follow those theologians who try to avoid the causal connotation in Luke’s ‘therefore’...by arguing that for Luke the conception of the child does not bring the Son of God into being, but only enables us to call him ‘Son of God’ who already was Son of God” (The Birth of the Messiah, p. 291).
The idea that a Person can both exist in eternity and then come into existence is logically impossible. The Bible speaks of the begetting, which means coming into existence, of the Son of God in several passages. In no case is anything said of a begetting in eternity. Such abuse of language would anyway be impossible in Scripture, which is to be interpreted according to the historical-grammatical method. Jesus was begotten as the Son of God in the womb of Mary (Matt. 1:20: “that which is conceived [the Greek says “begotten”] in her is from the holy spirit”). I John 5:18 (see modern translations) refers to the Son of God as begotten in the past, that is as described in Matthew 1:20 and Luke 1:35 (“the holy thing begotten”). A son is by definition begotten, that is, brought into existence. A son cannot be a son unless he is brought into existence by his father. “Eternal Sonship” is as contradictory as a square circle. The Bible does not recognize an “eternal Son.”
Summary
Luke and Matthew leave no doubt that Jesus came into being as the Son of God at his begetting and subsequent birth. Luke’s careful link between the miraculous conception and the resultant divine sonship of Jesus destroys the age-old tradition that Jesus was Son of God from eternity. James Buswell (whom we cited earlier) described the doctrine of the “eternal generation” of the Son as “inexplicable” as well as entirely unbiblical.
Professor Stewart declares that the church fathers of the fourth century “involved themselves in more than a Cretan labyrinth by undertaking to defend the eternal generation of the Son.” Tragically, nearly all denominations live under the shadow of the unscriptural idea that Jesus was the eternal Son of God. The orthodoxy of Gabriel and Luke has been replaced by a different view. If the title “God the Son” never appears in Scripture, we may well ask what churchgoers are doing when they celebrate him in religious meetings. Is it not time for Jesus, the Son of God who came into existence by miraculous conception, to be reinstated at the center of our attention? It was this Son of God who was promised as the Messiah. Of him God assured David: “He [your descendant] will be My Son” (2 Sam. 7:14; Heb. 1:5). David was not promised “human nature” as his descendant, nor an already existing person, but one who, from the moment of his conception, would be the Son of God.
This promised Son has never been anyone else but “the one Mediator between God and mankind, the Man Messiah Jesus” (I Tim. 2:5). This is the mature Christology of apostolic Christianity and it accords perfectly with the truth annunciated by Gabriel to Mary that she was to bring into being, under the influence of Holy Spirit (which is God’s creative power at work), the Son of God and Son of David. May this truly human Jesus be hailed as Messiah and Savior in all quarters of the world. May he also come soon to establish his wonderful reign of peace across the globe.
It is a tragedy when the historical Messiah, Son of God, is replaced by another figure, one who was mysteriously and inexplicably “coequal with the Father” and generated in eternity, a concept which is foreign to the Bible writers. Christians should embrace the Jesus of history and of the Bible, the Son who could say, in a sense not possible for any other human person, “God is my Father.” He is thus the uniquely begotten Son. We are invited to become his brothers by being supernaturally born again and claim Jesus as brother and Savior. He, after all, is “the firstborn among many brothers.”²
No comments:
Post a Comment