Jesus, Son of God, is the son of Mary (Mark 6:3). Paul’s use of ginesthai in Galatians 4:4 (and Rom. 1:3) is very remarkable, as many have pointed out. Paul said that the Son of God came into existence (from ginesthai), using a special word, not just the usual word for being born (which he uses in the same letter for others who were normally conceived). The fact that the Son “came into existence” from Mary (Gal. 4:4) proves that the Son was not already in existence. If he had been, this would not have been a coming into existence as Son of God. It would have been some sort of transition from one form to another, about which Matthew and Luke know nothing at all.
The importance of this subject is, of course, that we are to believe in the Messiah Jesus, the man. A pre-human person is not really human! You cannot be before you are. We have to be on guard against “Jesuses” who are not really the real Jesus (2 Cor. 11:1-4). A “Michael the Archangel Jesus” is not the human Messiah of the Bible. Nor is a God-Jesus.
Distinguished exegete James Dunn gives a lucid account of Luke’s view of Jesus: He says, “Luke 1:35 speaks of a begetting; [it is] a becoming which is in view, the coming into existence of one who will be called, and will in fact be the Son of God, not the transition of a preexistent being to become the soul of a human baby or the metamorphosis of a divine being into a human fetus...Luke’s intention is clearly to describe the creative process of begetting...Similarly in Acts there is no sign of any Christology of preexistence” (Christology in the Making, p. 51).
Rather curiously a recent book (1998) by the systematician at the seminary of the Free Church of Scotland seems to be trying to get rid of this evidence by saying (surely quite inaccurately) that “Luke uses the language of creation and not of generation” (The Person of Christ, p. 33).
In fact Luke 1:35 makes it clear that “the holy one to be generated will be the Son of God,” and it is precisely (dio kai) as a result of that miracle in Mary that the child will be the Son of God. The Bible in fact offers no alternative or contradicting reason for Jesus being the unique Son of God other than the miracle performed by God. This portrait of the Son is powerful, and it stems from a recent miracle by God closer to us in time than the creation in Genesis.
Luke 1:35 allows for no Son before the Son! So 1 John 5:18 (not KJV) confirms the begetting of the Son in line with Matthew 1:20 and Luke 1:35. Jesus “came to be” some two thousand years ago. There is no prehistoric Son of God in the Bible, other than in the counsels of God. One can only come into existence once, unless we are talking about death and a subsequent resurrection — which is another issue.
1 comments:
I worked in the Middle East for 5years. There, one's family tree is very important (hence the use of "bin" or "al",meaning "daughter" or "from" or "of"). To them, identifying the bloodline of the Son of God would have been normal and correct.
Let's pretend that we were born as adults, and had never heard of or read the Bible (and maybe were Middle Eastern too). We are also ordinary Joe Soap sort of people, with little education. We would doubtless accept Jesus's creation in Mary, as a new being never known before, without question. Why not? After all, it is the most normal, natural way for it to occur. Why, then, do some, with the benefit of years of advanced education, find it hard to accept something that is so straight forward? The Bible was written for ordinary men, let's not forget that.
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