Ro 8', where the Son does not become the Son by being sent, but is already ' God's own Son ' (emphatic) before He is sent, tends the same way.
In the Epp. of St. John there is nothing quite conclusive. We are really at tlie same level as in the Gospel. But, as there, the absolute use of ' the Father ' and ' the Son ' and of ' God the Father ' (1 Ju 2~-« 4" 5'^ 2 Jn »••'• », cf. 1 P l^, Jude') sug- gests a conception of Sonship which dates bacK behind the historic iiiaiiifestation. On Jn I" set above.
2iote on the origin of the Christian use of the title ' Son of God.' — In his able and interesting but far too confident and sweeping book, Die AnfUiu)e unaerer licliifion (Tiibingen u. Leipzig, 1901), p. !i95, Prof. Wernle of Basel commits himself to the proposition that ' from the OT and from Rabbinimn there ia no road that leads to the doctrine of the Divinity of Christ.' He allows that the title 'Son of God' is strictly Jewish, but he appears to think that the further step 'Son of God = God' was taken upon Gentile ground, through the lax ideas brought in by the converts from paganism, and their readiness to admit new divinities to the Pantheon. Against this, indeed, ought rightly to be set the fact that the Iirst lesson that they leamt on coming over to Christianity was the great lesson that God is One. But it was not really left to the Gentile Christians to crown an edifice that was incomplete without them. Wernle himself evidently feels that St. Paul had already gone far by identifying Christ with the ' Lord ' of OT. He isohliged further to say that in his Christology St. Paul is not really a Jew, and to set down this side of his teaching to a supposed ' mytho- logical tendency ' which he himself is unable to an;ount for.
it is one of the ground fallacies of Wenile's book to attribute far too much to the initiative of St. Paul. It the deiflcption of Christ had been really due to him, and if in carrying it out be had been acting in opposition to the sense of the Christian community, we should most certainly have hoard of it. But it is quite beyond question thatChrist iliinself was accused before the Sanhedrin of an extreme form of blaijphemy, and that it was upon that charge that He was condemned (Mk I4"'i-'J^1). In the Fourth Gospel we are expressly tolil that the Jews rtganled the claim of Christ as 'making himself equal with Qcri' (Jn 61**). It is, however, another of Wenile's ground fallacies to treat especially the Jewish element in this Gospel with great one-sidedness (see SynopU Frage, p. 255, a real blot upon on otherwise excellent book).
The only at all coiiteinpomry attempt known to the present writer to distin^aiish radically between vlir Guu and 6wf ia in Clem, Ilotru xvu 15, 10 (cf. x. 10). It is characteristic of the teaching of that curiously isolated production. At a later date the distinction became the main fulcrum of Arianism.
III. The Early Ciiukch.— We might sum up at the point we have reached ; but it seems better to pass on a few steps beyond the close of NT. which is not a real break.
578
SON OF GOD
SON OF GOD
1. Thr, sub-Apostolic Fathers. — In the sub-Apos- tolic writings we find a state of tilings very similar to that which we have just left behind. There is no doubt a certain amount of usage in which the term ' Son ' may be appropriately explained of the Incarnate.
Such would be, e.g., Ignatius, Smyrn. i. 1, 'per- suaded as touching our Lord that he is truly of the race of David according to the flesli, but Son of God by the Divine will and imwer, truly born of a virgin.' This is clearly modelled on Ro l* (.similarly Barn. v. 9, 11).
But even in this writer there are instances where a less restricted sense would seem to be intended, as in the Trinitarian passage, Magn. xiii. 1, 'that ye may prosper in all things ... in the Son and rather and in the Spirit' (iv vlf kclI irarpl Kal iv TTvevixaTi) ; and in Kom. inscr., '[the Cliurch] which I also salute in tlie name of Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father' (vlou rarods). We seem to have here the absolute use of ' Father ' and ' Son ' as correlative to each other, without refer- ence to the Incarnation. Cf. Magn. vi. 1, 'Jesus Christ, who was with the Father before the worlds and ajipeared at the end of time ' ; if the Father- hood is i>re-niundane, the Sonship must also be pre-mundane.
All ambiguity is removed in Bam. vi. 12, where we have the first express reference of the plural in Gn 1-' to ' the Son,' ' For the scripture saith con- cerning us, how he saith to the Son : Let us make,' etc. (cf. V. 5). The strange reading 'Son of God,' foisted into the free quotation of Ex 17'* in Barn. xii. 9, can hardly be adduced, because Joshua is regarded as a type by anticipation of the In- jarnate.