Incarnated Sonship or Eternal Sonship of Jesus Christ?

[public hermit]

Sounds like salvific faith is eternal too, then.

I'm not sure I'm following. You mean if the Son is eternal, having faith in the Son is too?

 

[Mark Quayle]

public hermit said:
It's seems if the eternal generates anything, then what is generated will also be eternal. Generating/generation seems to have the peculiar property of producing the same kind as the one generating, unlike creating or making.

Mark Quayle said:
Sounds like salvific faith is eternal too, then.

I'm not sure I'm following. You mean if the Son is eternal, having faith in the Son is too?

No. I'm saying that since salvific faith is not of human origin, but itself a gift of God, (as the gift of salvation is through faith, the faith therefore is also gift of God; and since it is seen in Scripture to be a result of the work of the Spirit, generated by the Spirit of God), then it too is eternal.

 

[public hermit]

public hermit said:
It's seems if the eternal generates anything, then what is generated will also be eternal. Generating/generation seems to have the peculiar property of producing the same kind as the one generating, unlike creating or making.

Mark Quayle said:
Sounds like salvific faith is eternal too, then.

No. I'm saying that since salvific faith is not of human origin, but itself a gift of God, (as the gift of salvation is through faith, the faith therefore is also gift of God; and since it is seen in Scripture to be a result of the work of the Spirit, generated by the Spirit of God), then it too is eternal.

That makes sense but how does that work? The subject who has faith is not eternal. How can their faith be eternal? Do you mean by divine decree?

 

[Mark Quayle]

That makes sense but how does that work? The subject who has faith is not eternal. How can their faith be eternal? Do you mean by divine decree?

By the principle or phenomenon that has been termed, "Already, but not yet", we may well find someday that those who belong to Christ ARE become eternal. They certainly are not of this world. (John 17)

If their faith is salvific, it is God's work in them, and 'theirs' in that it concerns them, and is caused inside them by the Spirit. But it is the Spirit that knows the gospel in the depth of its entirety, the depth of sin, the horror of sin and rebellion against God, the corruption of creation, the entire depth of the mercy and love of God, not to mention all the other wisdom related to that fact —the depth and breadth of the Gospel itself; and the strength of commitment to see it through, the desire to serve God in love and admiration and devotion, the wisdom to be 'superconquering' (Romans 8:37) all obstacles, and knowing God completely, so that the absolute confidence in what God has determined and will cause to come to pass easily a given and not wish-think. All of this and so much more is included in that faith. It is not the amount of faith that saves, but the quality of it. If it is worked within us by the Spirit of God, it is salvific faith.

None of this is possible if the faith is by our understanding, knowledge, wisdom, effort, force of will, desire or integrity. Experience should make that plain. We are silly and unreliable at best.

We do so only because he did it in us. It is God who works in us both to will and to do according to his will for his purposes. Apart from that, we would still be at enmity with him. Our decisions for him, and any virtues that develop from our becoming born again, are a result of that faith, and not a cause of that faith; though we can work to increase our faith, and we can stifle it, we cannot change its character, if indeed it is made of God.

 

[public hermit]

By the principle or phenomenon that has been termed, "Already, but not yet", we may well find someday that those who belong to Christ ARE become eternal. They certainly are not of this world. (John 17)

If their faith is salvific, it is God's work in them, and 'theirs' in that it concerns them, and is caused inside them by the Spirit. But it is the Spirit that knows the gospel in the depth of its entirety, the depth of sin, the horror of sin and rebellion against God, the corruption of creation, the entire depth of the mercy and love of God, not to mention all the other wisdom related to that fact —the depth and breadth of the Gospel itself; and the strength of commitment to see it through, the desire to serve God in love and admiration and devotion, the wisdom to be 'superconquering' (Romans 8:37) all obstacles, and knowing God completely, so that the absolute confidence in what God has determined and will cause to come to pass easily a given and not wish-think. All of this and so much more is included in that faith. It is not the amount of faith that saves, but the quality of it. If it is worked within us by the Spirit of God, it is salvific faith.

None of this is possible if the faith is by our understanding, knowledge, wisdom, effort, force of will, desire or integrity. Experience should make that plain. We are silly and unreliable at best.

We do so only because he did it in us. It is God who works in us both to will and to do according to his will for his purposes. Apart from that, we would still be at enmity with him. Our decisions for him, and any virtues that develop from our becoming born again, are a result of that faith, and not a cause of that faith; though we can work to increase our faith, and we can stifle it, we cannot change its character, if indeed it is made of God.

Okay, the subjective experience of having faith is not eternal. How could it be? We can only have faith in time. But the fact one will have faith , does have faith, and will be consummated in faith is eternal. That makes sense to me. I still assume the subjective experience begins in time and is experienced as sought, prayed about, chosen, etc. Those all seem compatible to me.

 

[Mark Quayle]

Okay, the subjective experience of having faith is not eternal. How could it be? We can only have faith in time. But the fact one will have faith , does have faith, and will be consummated in faith is eternal. That makes sense to me. I still assume the subjective experience begins in time and is experienced as sought, prayed about, chosen, etc. Those all seem compatible to me.

I'm not going to say we don't pray and seek to have faith. That much is already chosen if we do that. But, as you are careful to term "the subjective experience of having faith", the experiencing of it is not itself the faith.

Here I have to parse a bit, (ha! As if we were not already parsing!). "What a person does, or has, 'incompletely' or 'in part'," is a temporal expression, or designates temporal use. But to have eternal faith temporally, does not mean that the faith is less eternal. But, I think, by implication, if it is eternal and eternally applied, it cannot disappear temporally —because, (or so I think), this temporal will be/is 'swallowed up' by (or in) the eternal. 'Death is swallowed up in victory—In Hebrew of Isa 25:8, from which it is quoted, "He (Jehovah) will swallow up death in victory"; that is, for ever: as "in victory" often means in Hebrew idiom'. 1 Corinthians 15:54 Commentaries: But when this perishable will have put on the imperishable, and this mortal will have put on immortality, then will come about the saying that is written, "DEATH IS SWALLOWED UP in victory..

God's creation is not just the temporal, but the eternal result of what he is doing in the temporal. It is for that eternal result that he made the temporal.

 

[public hermit]

I'm not going to say we don't pray and seek to have faith. That much is already chosen if we do that. But, as you are careful to term "the subjective experience of having faith", the experiencing of it is not itself the faith.

Here I have to parse a bit, (ha! As if we were not already parsing!). "What a person does, or has, 'incompletely' or 'in part'," is a temporal expression, or designates temporal use. But to have eternal faith temporally, does not mean that the faith is less eternal. But, I think, by implication, if it is eternal and eternally applied, it cannot disappear temporally —because, (or so I think), this temporal will be/is 'swallowed up' by (or in) the eternal. 'Death is swallowed up in victory—In Hebrew of Isa 25:8, from which it is quoted, "He (Jehovah) will swallow up death in victory"; that is, for ever: as "in victory" often means in Hebrew idiom'. 1 Corinthians 15:54 Commentaries: But when this perishable will have put on the imperishable, and this mortal will have put on immortality, then will come about the saying that is written, "DEATH IS SWALLOWED UP in victory..

God's creation is not just the temporal, but the eternal result of what he is doing in the temporal. It is for that eternal result that he made the temporal.

I can get along with what you're saying. But how is the subjective experience of having faith not itself faith. Are you equating faith with the Holy Spirit?

 

[Mark Quayle]

I can get along with what you're saying. But how is the subjective experience of having faith not itself faith. Are you equating faith with the Holy Spirit?

Intuitively, I think it can come to that. But I don't know that it is accurate, but perhaps to only say that it is of God. —What is eternal is certainly of God's nature.

The attempt to fit the eternal to human temporal speech brings up all sorts of ways to say a thing. "Temporally, we can't quite fit the concepts into our heads, but faith does that for us." might be one way to put that.

Perhaps, in the same way that it can be said that 'the Gospel IS Christ', maybe it can indeed be said that 'salvific Faith is the Spirit of God in us". But I'd be careful about making the construction doctrine. It needs a lot of scriptural support first, to make it more than just 'a way to look at it'.

 

[65James]

In Isaiah 9:6-7 one of great prophecy of Jesus Birth, we are told a Son is given to us so why did not scripture state eternal/everlasting Son while at the end of the verse, He is called the Everlasting Father?
In this same Book of the Bible the Word prophecies of His First Coming only acknowledging that He along with Two other Members are GOD, never called Himself the Son, Isaiah 48:16-17.

In Luke 1:35 the angel Gabriel states He shall be called the Son of God, instead of stating He is the Eternal Son or even He is the Son of God probably didn’t want to confuse us more since most of the Church ignores Isaiah’s 9:6 Title the Everlasting Father.

Galatians 4:4, God states at His timing He sent His Son, made of a woman, and the law. The next few verses reveal that this was done for all God’s other children, God had only One Begotten, and because the Only Begotten Son came down from heaven to take away our sin problem, II Corinthians 5:21 Christ sacrifice allow all His other Children to be adopted into His family and made heirs, Romans 8:14-17 and Hebrew 2:9-18.

For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, through He was RICH, yet for your sake He became poor, that ye through His poverty might be rich. II Corinthians 8:9
Christ as the Word/Logos has always been, John 1:1-18, when He Became Man he became the second Son of God (only in our minds by time), for Adam was the son of God, Luke 3:38. But Jesus is truly the First and only Begotten Son of God. But as anybody knows by Title the Son is Subject to Father. Jesus accepted this drop willingly because by doing so He was made lower than the angels, Hebrews 2:9. By which He also sanctify us as He calls us His children (Being Everlasting Father, Isaiah 9:6) see Hebrews 2:10-14.
For during Job’s suffering Job cried for a Mediator between himself and God, Job 9:33. So that to be our High Priest the Word became Flesh to become the Only Begotten Son so He might suffer for us all and call us to be adopted into His Family, Galatians 6:10; Ephesians 2:19; 3:14-15.

So that now I can see that after Jesus gives us a Body like His, Philippians 3:20-21. That Jesus Christ, God Himself, shall submit Himself as our High Priest, Hebrews 7:25-28; to His Father I Corinthians 15:24-28. That God may be all and all. Psalms 89:27 states Christ as Human was God Firstborn.

 

[ViaCrucis]

In Isaiah 9:6-7 one of great prophecy of Jesus Birth, we are told a Son is given to us so why did not scripture state eternal/everlasting Son while at the end of the verse,

Jesus' relationship to the Father is that of Son. He is the Father's only-begotten. In the Holy and Divine Trinity there are Three Divine Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The Eternal and Divine Person of the Son, at a specific point in history, took on flesh, became human, was conceived in the womb of the Virgin Mary by the power of the Holy Spirit.

God the Son, therefore, was conceived and born, as the human son of Mary.

Jesus is the Divine Son of the Father.
Jesus is the human son of Mary.

"Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given"--to Mary, born of Mary.

Mary's Child, Mary's Son is also the Divine Son of the Father:

"And He shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, God the Mighty, Perpetual Father, Prince of Peace"

The One who would be born of Mary, the Messiah, shall be called these things; for the One whom Mary conceives in her womb is God, the Divine Son of the Father.

He is called the Everlasting Father?

אֲבִי עַד (Aby-ad), "a perpetual father", "father everlasting".

This is a royal title for the Messiah. In the ancient world kings were regarded as a father of the nation. The Messiah, as King, has an everlasting kingdom and dominion which can never pass away (Daniel 7:14).

In this same Book of the Bible the Word prophecies of His First Coming only acknowledging that He along with Two other Members are GOD, never called Himself the Son, Isaiah 48:16-17.

Isaiah 48:16-17 doesn't call Him Logos either. So that is irrelevant.

But what does it say in the Epistle to the Hebrews?

"But of the Son He says, 'Your Throne O God is forever and ever, the scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom'" (Hebrews 1:8)

God the Son.

In Luke 1:35 the angel Gabriel states He shall be called the Son of God, instead of stating He is the Eternal Son or even He is the Son of God probably didn’t want to confuse us more since most of the Church ignores Isaiah’s 9:6 Title the Everlasting Father.

The Son was conceived and born of the Virgin Mary, and He is confessed as such, "But who do you say that I am?" the Lord asked His disciples, to which Peter says, "You are the Christ! The Son of the Living God!" And how did Peter know this, through human knowledge, human intuition? No, but from God.

He's not merely a prophet, another Elijah, or another John the Baptist, He's something more: He's the Messiah, and He's the Divine Son of the Father made flesh.

Galatians 4:4, God states at His timing He sent His Son, made of a woman, and the law.

Sent His Son. The Son sent and incarnate, made man, of Mary's flesh. The Son came down from the infinite and eternal glory, and became human. The Son was sent. The Son was made man, conceived, and born.

The next few verses reveal that this was done for all God’s other children, God had only One Begotten, and because the Only Begotten Son came down from heaven to take away our sin problem, II Corinthians 5:21 Christ sacrifice allow all His other Children to be adopted into His family and made heirs, Romans 8:14-17 and Hebrew 2:9-18.

It is because we having been joined and united to Christ that we share in His Sonship. He, the Eternal Son of the Father, as pure grace, gives to us a share in what He has in relation to the Father; therefore to have the Holy Spirit in us we now can call His Father our Father, for we have received the Spirit of adoption, we have received the Spirit of the Son, by which we can cry out and say "Abba! Father!".

We have become sons, heirs, joint-heirs with Christ not because of our sonship, but because of His Sonship. He is the Son, we were enemies and strangers, alienated from God; but in Christ we have received adoption as sons. So now the One and Only Son, the Monogenes of the Father, has many brothers and sisters; who have been joined to Him, and partake in Him, and therefore partake in His unique, one-of-a-kind Sonship. He alone is Son, and yet by grace, we are now also sons.

By taking away Christ's Eternal and Divine Sonship you actually diminish just how profound and powerful what Paul says in places like Galatians 4:6 and in Romans 8.

There is an important concept and word in Christian theology here: Theosis. It's what St. Peter speaks about in his epistle when he says, "You have become partakers of the Divine Nature". We have actually become partakers of God, partakers of God's life, we have been received up, by grace, into the incomprehensible Life of God the Holy Trinity. The love which the Father has for His Son, an eternal love, is actually a love which we have been brought into by grace.

This is one of the most profound mysteries of our Christian faith. The one who has faith in Christ is not welcome into God's House merely as a servant or guest, but as a beloved child and heir. The love of God, which exists without beginning or end, between the Three Eternal Divine Persons of the Trinity, is the same love with which He loves us. That we should know God, not only as Lord, as Creator, as King, but to know the One Jesus has known for all eternity as His Father is now the One we too can call Father. The Father of Jesus is now our Father, by grace. And I, a wretched sinner, by the imputed righteousness of Christ which I have received as pure grace, having been clothed with Christ Himself (Galatians 3:27) should now be found in Jesus Christ before the Father, blameless and holy as He is, a beloved son. And having received this now, as pure gift, through faith; the fathomless mysteries of eternity are unimaginable:

"Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when He appears we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is." - 1 John 3:2

St. John speaks of an unknowable, but glorious, future. Now, no one should imagine that this means we shall be divine--we shall never be divine; but this mystery is part of our hope, and God's glorious designs for the future. In St. John's Apocalypse, at the end, the heavenly city descends upon the earth, and God is with man; we read there is no need of sun or moon, for the universe itself shall be illuminated by the Light of God. Let us not entertain idle speculations, but know that this is something so incomprehensibly glorious that it ought to bring us to a state of continued awe before God.

"What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love Him" - 1 Corinthians 2:9

For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, through He was RICH, yet for your sake He became poor, that ye through His poverty might be rich. II Corinthians 8:9
Christ as the Word/Logos has always been, John 1:1-18, when He Became Man he became the second Son of God (only in our minds by time), for Adam was the son of God, Luke 3:38. But Jesus is truly the First and only Begotten Son of God. But as anybody knows by Title the Son is Subject to Father. Jesus accepted this drop willingly because by doing so He was made lower than the angels, Hebrews 2:9. By which He also sanctify us as He calls us His children (Being Everlasting Father, Isaiah 9:6) see Hebrews 2:10-14.
For during Job’s suffering Job cried for a Mediator between himself and God, Job 9:33. So that to be our High Priest the Word became Flesh to become the Only Begotten Son so He might suffer for us all and call us to be adopted into His Family, Galatians 6:10; Ephesians 2:19; 3:14-15.

So that now I can see that after Jesus gives us a Body like His, Philippians 3:20-21. That Jesus Christ, God Himself, shall submit Himself as our High Priest, Hebrews 7:25-28; to His Father I Corinthians 15:24-28. That God may be all and all. Psalms 89:27 states Christ as Human was God Firstborn.

If you were to dig more deeply, study more thoroughly, you would be more astonished by the depths and richness of Scripture.

You subtract from our salvation when you deny the Eternal Generation of the Son; not only does this lessen Christ, but it lessens Christ's saving work, and the power and work of the Spirit both now in the present, and in the Age to Come.

The depths and richness of Christian theology is so good. Drink up, it will satisfy.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[Carl Emerson]

So what is your view was Jesus the Word (LOGOS) made flesh, incarnation that He became the Son of God on His birth in this world/or death and Resurrection as a few Protestant churches teach (before this He existed as the LOGOS) which is my view? Or do you believe Jesus Christ is the Eternal Son of God? If the latter could you show some Scriptures to support the Eternal Sonship?

Eternal son of God - Existed before Abraham - He is the I AM - Was recognised as the Son of God before His birth on earth.

 

[The Liturgist]

So what is your view was Jesus the Word (LOGOS) made flesh, incarnation that He became the Son of God on His birth in this world/or death and Resurrection as a few Protestant churches teach (before this He existed as the LOGOS) which is my view? Or do you believe Jesus Christ is the Eternal Son of God? If the latter could you show some Scriptures to support the Eternal Sonship?

As @ViaCrucis and others have asserted, Jesus Christ is the Word of God (the Logos), Begotten of the Father before all Ages, with whom He shares one essence (homoousios, to quote the Nicene Creed) and is co-eternal and co-equal. It is correct to refer to the Trinity as God the Father, who is alone unoriginate, but who is coequal and coeternal with God the Son, who is eternally begotten of Him, and God the Holy Spirit, who eternally proceeds from Him, with neither the Son nor the Spirit being created, for there was never a time when they were not. Rather, it is a union of three persons, the Father, His Son and His Spirit, eternally united in perfect Love, in the unoriginate Essence of the Father which they share.

As for Jesus Christ, Christological Orthodoxy is best asserted by the ancient hymn Ho Monogenes*, used in the liturgy of the Oriental Orthodox churches (every Syriac Orthodox liturgy begins with it, and it is used in the Coptic Orthodox church at the most solemn moment on Good Friday), and added to the Second Antiphon of the DIvine Liturgy of the Eastern Orthodox Church by Emperor Justinian (and from this, it made its way into the liturgy of the Armenian Apostolic Church):

Only-Begotten Son and Immortal Word of God,
Who for our salvation didst will to be incarnate of the holy Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary;
Who without change didst become man and was crucified;
Who art one of the Holy Trinity, glorified with the Father and the Holy Spirit:
O Christ our God, trampling down death by death, save us!

 

[The Liturgist]

public hermit said:
It's seems if the eternal generates anything, then what is generated will also be eternal. Generating/generation seems to have the peculiar property of producing the same kind as the one generating, unlike creating or making.

Mark Quayle said:
Sounds like salvific faith is eternal too, then.

No. I'm saying that since salvific faith is not of human origin, but itself a gift of God, (as the gift of salvation is through faith, the faith therefore is also gift of God; and since it is seen in Scripture to be a result of the work of the Spirit, generated by the Spirit of God), then it too is eternal.

That makes sense but how does that work? The subject who has faith is not eternal. How can their faith be eternal? Do you mean by divine decree?

Interestingly, the Orthodox believe that the Church has always existed. This makes sense if we accept the Pauline assertion that the Church is the Body of Christ, onto which we are grafted through baptism, and whose members we commune with by partaking of that same Body and Blood in the Eucharist, which seems to me the main theme of 1 Corinthians, which I tend to regard as the most important Pauline epistle (others regard Romans as more important, I have seen it called “The Constitution of the Church” but if a Pauline epistle is the Constitution of the Church, which I find a dubious proposition, for it is anachronistic, and thus I would argue a fallacious idea, it would undoubtably be 1 Corinthians. But since it is generally agreed the four canonical Gospels are the most important part of the New Testament, read with a similiar reverence in traditional churches to how the Torah is read in Judaism, in a manner clearly inspired by it (indeed the Assyrian church kept the Jewish lectionary but rearranged it, so you have a Torah lesson, a Haftarah (related Old Testament lesson), then, a prophetically connected New Testament lesson and finally a Gospel, for a total of four lessons, in the East Syriac liturgical tradition, which also includes the most Jewish of the Eucharistic liturgies, that of the Apostles Addai and Mari, which has the seven-fold structure of a Jewish table blessing, a unique structure different from that of the anaphorae, or Eucharistic prayers, of Antioch (and Jerusalem), Alexandria, Rome and Western Europe, which were the other major liturgical traditions of antiquity (see The Shape of the Liturgy, by Dom Gregory Dix (an Anglican Benedictine monk of the Order of the Holy Cross, and an interesting man, who reposed in 1950), or The Eucharistic Liturgies by Paul Bradshaw and Maxwell Johnson)

 

[The Liturgist]

The Word was in God.
The Word came out of God and became the Son.
A body was prepared for the Son, and He was born into that body.

Could you kindly explain how you reconcile that with the Nicene Creed?

 

[MarkRohfrietsch]

The Word was in God.
The Word came out of God and became the Son.
A body was prepared for the Son, and He was born into that body.

The "body" was not prepared for Him, he was not inserted into a body... Mary conceived and bore a son. Because of the conception, Jesus and his body do not coexist; rather they are one being. Fully human and fully divine. Like you and I, conceived and born with His body; unlike you and I, fully divine and also fully human.