Jesus the Son of God E-Book

D. A. Carson

• Herausgeber: Crossway
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Seitenzahl: 154

Beschreibung

Although it is a foundational confession for all Christians, much of the theological significance of Jesus's identity as "the Son of God" is often overlooked or misunderstood. Moreover, this Christological concept stands at the center of today's Bible translation debates and increased ministry efforts to Muslims. New Testament scholar D. A. Carson thus sheds light on this important issue with his usual exegetical clarity and theological insight, first by broadly surveying Jesus's biblical name as "the Son of God", and then by focusing on two key texts that speak of Christ's sonship. The book concludes with the implications of Jesus's divine sonship for how modern Christians think and speak about Christ, especially in relation to Bible translation and missionary engagement with Muslims across the globe.

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“No christological designation is as essential as ‘Son of God’; none is more important. This study makes that impressively clear by sound and careful exegesis and theological reflection in the face of misunderstandings and disputes, past and current. Once again, D. A. Carson serves the church well.”

Richard B. Gaffin Jr., Professor of Biblical and Systematic Theology, Emeritus, Westminster Theological Seminary

“I know what it is to reject Jesus as the ‘Son of God.’ As a former Muslim, nothing baffled and, quite frankly, angered me more than hearing Christians call Jesus ‘the Son of God.’ I thought such persons were blasphemers worthy of condemnation. But now, nothing gives me more joy than to know that Jesus is indeed the Son of God and that the title ‘Son of God’ carries far more truth and wonder than I could have imagined. So I welcome this volume from D. A. Carson with all the enthusiasm and joy of one who once denied the truth that Jesus is the Son of God. With his customarily clear, warm, careful, and balanced manner, Carson gives us a fresh exploration of a precious truth that so many Christians take for granted and so many Muslims misunderstand. If you want to know Jesus and the Bible better, this surely is one aid that will not disappoint.”

Thabiti Anyabwile, Senior Pastor, First Baptist Church of Grand Cayman; author, What Is a Healthy Church Member?

“What does it mean for us to confess that Jesus is the Son of God? D. A. Carson tackles this question in Jesus the Son of God. In this little book he lays a firm foundation to help the church understand ‘Son of God’ with reference to Jesus. After considering uses of ‘Son of God’ in Scripture, both in general and when applied to Jesus, Carson models the way systematic theology should be based on solid biblical exegesis. Carson is especially concerned to bring his study to bear on the controverted issue in missiological circles concerning how to present Jesus as Son of God in Christian and Muslim contexts. Here he critically, but kindly, calls for rethinking new translations that have replaced references to God the Father and Jesus as his Son to make them more acceptable to Muslims.”

Robert A. Peterson, Professor of Systematic Theology, Covenant Seminary

JESUS THE SON OF GOD

Jesus the Son of God: A Christological Title Often Overlooked, Sometimes Misunderstood, and Currently Disputed

Copyright © 2012 by D. A. Carson

Published by Crossway

1300 Crescent Street

Wheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law.

Cover design: Studio Gearbox

Cover image: The Bridgeman Art Library

First printing 2012

Printed in the United States of America

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture references are from The Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture quotations marked AT are the author’s translation.

Scripture quotations marked ESV are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

All emphases in Scripture quotations have been added by the author.

Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-4335-3796-7 PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-3797-4 Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-3798-1 ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-3799-8

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Carson, D. A.

Jesus the Son of God : a christological title often

overlooked, sometimes misunderstood, and currently

disputed / D.A. Carson.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

ISBN 978-1-4335-3796-7

1. Jesus Christ—Divinity. 2. Son of God. I. Title.

BT216.3.C37         2012

2012021031

232'.8—dc23

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

VP       21  20  19  18  17  16  15  14  13  12

15  14  13  12  11  10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1

This book is gratefully dedicated to John Piper

who keeps reminding us by his own practice

to pay attention to the text.

CONTENTS

Preface

1  “Son of God” as a Christological Title

2  “Son of God” in Select Passages

3  “Jesus the Son of God” in Christian and Muslim Contexts

PREFACE

This little book originated in three lectures delivered at Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi, on March 5–6, 2012. In shortened form it became the Gaffin Lecture on Theology, Culture, and Mission at Westminster Theological Seminary on March 14, 2012, and then, slightly modified, became the substance of three lectures in French at the Colloque Réformée held in Lyon, France, in April of the same year. I am enormously indebted to Michel Lemaire and Jacob Mathieu for their very careful work of translation. It is a pleasure rather than a mere obligation to express my hearty gratitude to those who organized these lectures and invited me to participate. I am hugely indebted to them for their hospitality and kindness.

I chose the topic about three years ago. Some work I had done while teaching the epistle to the Hebrews, especially Hebrews 1 where Jesus is said to be superior to angels because he is the Son, prompted me to think about the topic more globally. Moreover, for some time I have been thinking through the hiatus between careful exegesis and doctrinal formulations. We need both, of course, but unless the latter are finally controlled by the former, and seen to be controlled by the former, both are weakened. The “Son of God” theme has become one of several test cases in my own mind. Since choosing the topic, however, the debates concerning what a faithful translation of “Son of God” might be, especially in contexts where one’s envisioned readers are Muslims, have boiled out of the journals read by Bible translators and into the open. Entire denominations have gotten caught up in the controversy, which shows no sign of abating. The last of these three chapters is devoted to addressing both of these points—how, in a Christian context, exegesis rightly leads to Christian confessionalism, and how, in a cross-cultural context concerned with preparing Bible translations for Muslim readers, one may wisely negotiate the current debate. But I beg you to read the first two chapters first. They provide the necessary textual detail on which discussion of the controversies must be based.

This book is not meant to be primarily a contribution to the current disputes, as important as those debates may be. It is meant to foster clear thinking among Christians who want to know what we mean when we join believers across the centuries in confessing, “I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and in his only Son Jesus, our Lord.”

Once again it is a pleasure to record my indebtedness to Andy Naselli for his invaluable suggestions.

Soli Deo gloria.

CHAPTER ONE

“SON OF GOD” AS A CHRISTOLOGICAL TITLE

“I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and in his only Son Jesus, our Lord.” Millions of Christians recite these words from the Apostles’ Creed week by week. But what does it mean to confess Jesus as God’s only Son? What does it mean to say that the God of the Bible has a Son? It cannot possibly mean exactly the same thing that I mean when I tell people, “Yes, I have a son.” Moreover, here and there in Scripture we learn (as we shall see) that Adam is God’s son, Israel is God’s son, King Solomon is God’s son, the Israelites are sons of God, the peacemakers shall be called sons of God, and angels can be referred to as God’s sons. So in what way is Jesus’s sonship like, or unlike, any of these? Why should we think of him as God’s only Son?

PRELIMINARY REFLECTIONS

For at least a century, Christian preaching and writing have focused much more attention on Jesus’s deity and Jesus’s lordship than on Jesus’s sonship. In recent times, when Christians have written and spoken about Jesus as the Son of God, they have tended to focus on one of three topics.

First, many works forged within the discipline of systematic theology discuss the sonship of Jesus, and especially the title “Son of God,” within their broader treatment of Trinitarian theology. The volume by Alister McGrath offers no “Son of God” entry in its index.1 When Professor McGrath treats “the biblical foundations of the Trinity,” he mentions three “personifications” of God within the Bible (though he prefers the term “hypostatizations”), namely, wisdom, the Word of God, and the Spirit of God.2 “Son” is not mentioned. But McGrath nicely treats the “Son” in the ensuing pages that work through the historical development of the doctrine of the Trinity during the patristic period. Here readers learn the Eastern approach to the Trinity (the Father begets the Son and breathes or “spirates” the Holy Spirit) and the Western approach to the Trinity (the Father begets the Son, and Father and Son breathe the Holy Spirit).3 McGrath devotes almost no effort to tying these discussions down to what the biblical texts actually say: this part of his treatment is caught up in patristic controversies. The recent and fine work of systematic theology by Michael Horton, in keeping with its greater length, devotes much more space to the Trinity, including more effort to tie his theological conclusions to Scripture.4 Yet neither McGrath nor Horton works through the different ways in which the title “Son of God” applies to Jesus. They focus almost exclusively on passages in which “Son of God” applies to Jesus and appears to have some bearing on our understanding of the Trinity. That is understandable, even commendable, granted their projects. Nevertheless, it leaves readers in the dark about the diversity of ways in which “Son of God” is used to refer to Jesus, and about the ways in which the same “son” language can be applied to Adam, Israelites, Solomon, peacemakers, and angels.5 And this list is not exhaustive!

Second, a handful of works are specialist volumes focusing not on the categories of systematic theology but on slightly different lines. Sam Janse traces the reception history of Psalm 2, especially the “You are My Son” formula in early Judaism and in the New Testament.6 The history Janse reconstructs is minimalist; certainly he draws no lines toward Trinitarianism. Following a rather different procedure, Michael Peppard analyzes the adoptive procedures in the social and political contexts of the Roman world and reads the New Testament and developing patristic evidence against that background.7 Readers will not be entirely mistaken if they conclude that his thesis is a new reductionism, one more example of exegesis by appeals to ostensible parallels (in this case, Graeco-Roman parallels)—of “parallelomania,” to use the lovely term coined by Samuel Sandmel.8

Third, in the last few years two spirited controversies have erupted and garnered their share of publications regarding “Son” or “Son of God” terminology applied to Jesus. The first of these clashes concerns the extent to which the Son is or is not subordinate to the Father, with a correlative bearing on debates over egalitarianism and complementarianism. I shall not devote much time to that debate in these chapters, but merely offer a handful of observations along the way. The second clash debates how the expression “Son of God” should be translated, especially in Bible translations designed for the Muslim world. I shall devote part of the third chapter to that subject—but I shall be prepared to do so only after laying the groundwork in the first two chapters.

These, then, have been the three major foci of interest when “Son of God” has been probed in recent years. Interesting exceptions occasionally surface. For example, one thinks of the recent excellent volume by Robert A. Peterson, Salvation Accomplished by the Son: The Work of Christ.9 Despite its many strengths, however, it says relatively little about how the Son-language works as applied to Jesus—that is, what it actually means. One may charitably suppose that this is primarily because Peterson’s focus is on the work of Christ rather than on the person of Christ. Again, the uniquely arranged and massive biblical theology of Greg Beale devotes many pages to Jesus’s sonship.10 Precisely because he is interested in tracing out developing trajectories through the Bible, Beale’s treatment is often much more tightly bound to specific biblical texts and less interested in later theological controversies that developed their own specialist terminology.

In the rest of this chapter, I focus first on sons and sonship, then on son or sons of God where there is no undisputed link with Jesus as the unique Son, and finally on Jesus the Son of God. I shall not restrict the discussion to passages where “son” or “sons” occur: after all, if God is portrayed as the Father, then in some sense those who are in relationship with him are being thought of as his sons or his children.

SONS AND SONSHIP

A large majority of the occurrences of “son” in the Bible, whether singular or plural but without the modifier “of God,” refer to a biological son. Sometimes the son is named: “When [Boaz] made love to [Ruth], the LORD enabled her to conceive, and she gave birth to a son. . . . And they named him Obed” (Ruth 4:13, 17); “Then God said, ‘Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you’” (Gen. 22:2). Sometimes the son, unnamed in the immediate context, is identified with a patronymic: “I have seen a son of Jesse of Bethlehem who knows how to play the lyre” (1 Sam. 16:18); or frequent references in the New Testament to the sons of Zebedee. If not the patronymic, there may be some other identifier, for example, “the son of Pharaoh’s daughter” (Heb. 11:24) or “the carpenter’s son” (Matt. 13:55).11 At other times the son is not named, but the context shows the relationship envisaged is entirely natural, as when the Shunammite woman berates Elisha, “Did I ask you for a son, my lord?” (2 Kings 4:28). This usage is very common: for example, “[Ahaz] followed the ways of the kings of Israel and even sacrificed his son in the fire” (2 Kings 16:3); “When it was time for Elizabeth to have her baby, she gave birth to a son” (Luke 1:57)—and of course the context soon discloses the son’s name, John (1:63). Under this usage are the occasions when a parent addresses a child, whose name is known, with the word “son,” as when Mary says to Jesus, “Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you” (Luke 2:48).

Sometimes the context shows that the word “son” is not referring to an individual, named or otherwise, but to a class, a typical son, as it were: “Know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, so the LORD your God disciplines you” (Deut. 8:5); “But suppose this son has a son who sees all the sins his father commits, and though he sees them, he does not do such things” (Ezek. 18:14). This kind of usage is scarcely less frequent in the New Testament: “Anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me” (Matt. 10:37); “There was a man who had two sons” (Luke 15:11). Perhaps this is also the place to mention passages where “son” is used, not to address an immediately male biological descendant, but a more distant relative, a member of the larger clan or tribe who is considerably younger—almost an avuncular usage, as when, in the story of the rich man and Lazarus, Abraham addresses the rich man as he suffers torments in Hades, “Son, remember . . .” (Luke 16:25).

All the examples mentioned so far presuppose natural sonship, biological sonship, as opposed to metaphorical usage. Before turning to the extensive metaphorical use of “son” and related terms in the Bible, it will prove helpful to reflect on what many of the expressions I am about to list have in common. In contemporary Western culture, sonship is established irrefutably by DNA: the biological connection can be established scientifically within a minuscule margin of error. By extension we also speak of adopted sons: the biological link disappears from view, but the legal and familial ties are very strong. What we are not used to are expressions like “sons of affliction,” “son of the morning,” “son of a bow,” and a host of others I shall list—all of them found in Scripture, though mostly unpreserved in contemporary translations. What do they have in common?

Vocationally speaking, in our culture relatively few sons end up doing what their fathers did; relatively few daughters end up doing what their mothers did. In many contexts I have asked this question: “How many of you men are now doing, vocationally, what your fathers did at the same age? How many of you women are now doing, vocationally, what your mothers did at the same age?” The percentage is rarely as much as 5 percent. In the ancient world, however, the percentage would have been much higher, frequently well over 90 percent. If your father was a farmer, you became a farmer; if your father was a baker, you became a baker; if your father was a carpenter, you became a carpenter—which of course is why Jesus could be known both as the carpenter’s son (Matt. 13:55), and, in one remarkable passage, as the carpenter (Mark 6:3—presumably after Joseph had died). If your family name was Stradivarius, you became a violin maker. You learned your trade, your vocation, even your identity, from your father. If you were a farmer, you learned from your father when and how to plant, when and how to irrigate, when and how to harvest—not from a nearby agricultural college. If you made violins, you learned from your father