Son of God (Christianity)
The fact that the Royal psalms were preserved suggests that the influence of Egyptian and other near eastern cultures on pre-exile religion needs to be taken seriously.
[4]: 150 [18] Isaiah could also be interpreted as the birth of a royal child, Psalm 2 nevertheless leaves the accession scenario as an attractive possibility.
[4]: 157 In the Book of Ecclesiasticus 4:10, in the Hebrew text, God calls a person who acts righteously his son.
[21] The term Son of God is also found as a small fragment along with other Dead Sea Scrolls, numbered as 4Q246.
[22] By the 2nd century, differences had developed among various Christian groups and to defend the mainstream view in the early Church, Irenaeus introduced the confession: "One Christ only, Jesus the Son of God incarnate for our salvation".
[45][46] It is debated when exactly Christians came to understand Psalm 110 as introducing a distinction of persons in the Godhead and indicating that Jesus was more than a human or angelic messiah, but also a divine entity who was David's lord.
[37]: 272 [42]: 939 Psalm 110 would play a crucial role in the development of the early Christian understanding of the divinity of Jesus.
The final reading of Psalm 110:1 incorporated a preexistent Son of God greater than both David and the angels.
The passages in Acts, Hebrews and Romans that refer to it give the appearance of being linked with Jesus' resurrection and/or exaltation.
The majority of scholars believe that the earliest Christian use of this Psalm was in relation to his resurrection, suggesting that this was initially thought of as the moment when he became Son, a status that the early Christians later extended back to his earthly life, to the beginning of that earthly life and, later still, to his pre-existence, a view that Aquila Hyung Il Lee questions.
[50] It is often used to refer to his divinity, from the beginning of the New Testament narrative when in Luke 1:32–35[55] the angel Gabriel announces: "the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee: wherefore also the holy thing which is begotten shall be called the Son of God.
[56] On two separate occasions the declarations are by God the Father, when during the Baptism of Jesus and then during the Transfiguration as a voice from Heaven.
In Luke 1:35, in the Annunciation, before the birth of Jesus, the angel tells Mary that her child "shall be called the Son of God".
[60] In John 19:7, the Jews cry out to Pontius Pilate "Crucify him" based on the charge that Jesus "made himself the Son of God."
[60] In Acts 9:20, after the Conversion of Paul the Apostle, and following his recovery, "straightway in the synagogues he proclaimed Jesus, that he is the Son of God."
According to the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus referred to himself obliquely as "the Son" and even more significantly spoke of God as "my Father" (Matthew 11:27 par.
[87] Through his death, resurrection, and ascension the Son is glorified by the Father (John 17:1–24), but it is not a glory that is thereby essentially enhanced.
First, although one has no real evidence for holding that he was humanly aware of his eternal pre-existence as Son, his "Abba-consciousness" revealed an intimate loving relationship with the Father.
The full Johannine development of the Father-Son relationship rests on an authentic basis in the Jesus-tradition (Mark 14:36; Matthew 11:25–26; 16:17; Luke 11:2).
Third, the Johannine theme of the Son with power to judge in the context of eternal life finds its original historical source in the sayings of Jesus about his power to dispose of things in the kingdom assigned to him by "my Father" (Luke 22:29–30)[95] and about one's relationship to him deciding one's final destiny before God (Luke 12:8–9).
[98] Paul and John likewise maintained and developed the correlative of all this, Jesus' stress on the fatherhood of God.
Paul's typical greeting to his correspondents runs as follows: "Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the/our Lord Jesus Christ".
If one examines these three passages in some detail, it raises the question whether Paul thinks of an eternally pre-existent Son coming into the world from his Father in heaven to set humanity free from sin and death (Romans 8:3, 32) and make it God's adopted children (Galatians 4:4–7).
The answer will partly depend, first, on the way one interprets other Pauline passages which do not use the title "Son of God" (2 Corinthians 8:9; Philippians 2:6–11).
These latter passages present a pre-existent Christ taking the initiative, through his "generosity" in "becoming poor" for us and "assuming the form of a slave".
[100] The answer will, second, depend on whether one judges 1 Corinthians 8:6 and Colossians 1:16 to imply that as a pre-existent being the Son was active at creation.
Third, it should be observed that the language of "sending" (or, for that matter, "coming" with its stress on personal purpose (Mark 10:45 par.
[54] Fourth, in their context, the three Son of God passages here examined (Romans 8:3, 32; Galatians 4:4) certainly do not focus on the Son's pre-existence, but on his being sent or given up to free human beings from sin and death, to make them God's adopted children, and to let them live (and pray) with the power of the indwelling Spirit.
According to John Yieh, in this account the Gospel of Matthew is unequivocally stating this as the church's view of Jesus.
[65] In Matthew 3:17 and Luke 3:22[114] Jesus allows himself to be called the Son of God by the voice from above, not objecting to the title.
