Proverbs 30, and Jesus' pre-incarnate "sonship"

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mattrose
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Re: Proverbs 30, and Jesus' pre-incarnate "sonship"

Post by mattrose » Thu Feb 28, 2019 1:08 am

I haven't read through this thread, but I just recently finished Matthew Bates book on the Trinity and it seems to me that he pretty convincingly demonstrates the eternal sonship of Jesus if one is willing to presuppose the NT authors and early church fathers were good at hermeneutics.

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Homer
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Re: Proverbs 30, and Jesus' pre-incarnate "sonship"

Post by Homer » Thu Feb 28, 2019 5:46 pm

Hi Matt,

Could you list the NT scriptures (or the best of them) from Bate's book that would seem to support eternal sonship?

Thanks, Homer

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Re: Proverbs 30, and Jesus' pre-incarnate "sonship"

Post by Paidion » Thu Feb 28, 2019 8:05 pm

Hi Matt, you wrote:I haven't read through this thread, but I just recently finished Matthew Bates book on the Trinity and it seems to me that he pretty convincingly demonstrates the eternal sonship of Jesus if one is willing to presuppose the NT authors and early church fathers were good at hermeneutics.
But what does "eternal Sonship" mean? If it means that Jesus existed as the Son of God right from the beginning of time, and that (contrary to Arius) there was NOT a time in which the Son did not exist, then I agree with the "eternal Sonship" of Jesus.

But if it means that there is an infinite regression of time into the past during which Jesus existed, I must say that for me this is a meaningless assertion. I cannot conceive of an infinite regression of time into the past. Time had a beginning, and in my understanding the begetting of the Son by the Father marked the beginning of time. Don't ask me what happened before that Beginning, for there WAS no "before." If there had been a time before the beginning of time, then the latter was NOT the beginning of time.

It could be asked, "What was the Father doing before the beginning of time? Again—there was no "before," since there was no time.
Then, how could the Father have begotten the Son? I know this is difficult or impossible to wrap our minds around the concept of time having had a beginning and that the Father existed and begat His Son simultaneously thereby causing the beginning of time. But it's just as difficult (or perhaps more so) to wrap our minds around the concept of an infinite regression of time into the past.

Not only did God beget Him as His Son, but He begat Him as God! He has always been God in the sense that He was begotten by God, and therefore divine also (just as a human son is man like his father, and is therefore human also).

In John 1:18, some translations have "the only begotten Son" has made God known. Others have "the only begotten God" has made God known. The only existing manuscripts from prior to A.D. 300 that contain John 1:18 are Papyrus 66 (from around A.D.150) and Papyrus 75 (from around A.D. 180). Both of them have "the only-begotten God." In those days, in order to save writing space on papyrus, words were abbreviated by writing just the first and last letter,and then putting a stroke over them to show that they were abbreviated. This was done even for short words such as "θεος" (theos). Unlike modern Greek all words were written with capital letters. So the word for "God" namely "θεος" was written as "ΘC" with a stroke over the two letters. it is thought that later on some copyists omitted the stroke in the middle of the first letter so that it became the word "Son" in Greek rather than "God." By the way, if you want to see that word for "God" in Papyrus 66, just go to the link below, and you will see a page in Greek. Count down to line 14 and looks for the word with the stroke over it.

https://ibb.co/VVT0bX3
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Re: Proverbs 30, and Jesus' pre-incarnate "sonship"

Post by 3Resurrections » Thu Feb 28, 2019 11:18 pm

Hi Matt,

One critical concern is that the "Son of God" must simultaneously be the promised "Seed of the Woman", or there is no efficacious mediator between God and man that is realized by any "sonship" relationship. God as "The Word" had to eventually jump into the human gene pool in order to become truly one of us, or that "sonship" would have had no relevance to us. In other words, an "eternal sonship" relationship, (or even a "sonship" initiated at creation, as Paidion affirms), is not beneficial to our lost cause unless that "sonship" comes via the "Seed of the Woman". Mary's unfertilized egg with its DNA was utilized to link deity with the human race, in order to provide us with a sinless representative and advocate . Of course, this couldn't happen except in real time, subsequent to the creation of humankind - specifically to come from womankind, since that effectively kept the male representative headship of a fallen Adam from corrupting the process. An ingenious solution that only God could have thought of and carried out.

Because of this necessity for the Son to be sharing the same type of human body form with those He represents, then if we had an "eternal sonship" existing before humanity and the world was established, this would have been pointless. We can't have an "eternal Son" without also having an "eternal Mother" to produce that "eternal Son". That idea veers off into the whole goddess thing (which Mary was not).

Instead, we have numerous instances ever since creation of "The Word" from John 1:1 making an appearance, even before the incarnation. This was not a human form, but like the celestial flesh of angels, it was a form that could adopt the appearance of a man on occasions in order to speak to individuals or groups. We all know the example of Genesis 15:1 (confirmed by Stephen in Acts 7:2 - "The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham..."). It says, "After these things THE WORD of the LORD came unto Abram in a vision, saying, Fear not, Abram: I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward."

Another we are all familiar with is Moses' case, speaking with God in a mouth-to-mouth conversation, without visions, when Moses beheld the form of the Lord (Numbers 12:6-8). Even Hagar testified that she had seen the same thing when the "angel of the Lord" spoke with her at the well. "And she called the name of the Lord God who spoke to her, Thou art God who seest me, for she said, For I have openly seen him that appeared to me." (Genesis 16:13 LXX).

And Samuel also, in I Samuel 3:21 (ESV): "And the LORD appeared again at Shiloh, for the LORD revealed himself to Samuel at Shiloh by THE WORD of the LORD. This was a similar revelation of "The Word" of the Lord after the first time that the Lord had revealed Himself during the night to the young Samuel. Before then, Samuel did not yet know the LORD, "neither was THE WORD of the LORD yet revealed unto him" (I Sam. 3:7).

Although these and other occasions have "The Word" manifesting itself in a type of audible, sometimes visible form, yet we shouldn't call these Old Testament appearances "Christophanies". More accurately, they should be called "Wordophanies", to coin a term, since the body of Christ had not yet been "prepared' in real time until the incarnation, as Hebrews 10:5 spells out for us. Because the sacrifice of bulls and goats could not take away sins, "Wherefore," (because of the insufficiency of all those past animal sacrifices) "when He cometh into the world," (just prior to the incarnation) "he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me." This "body" was going to be the one for which God the Father had planned that Mary would supply the human material; Christ being conceived by the overshadowing power of the Highest, and with the Holy Ghost coming upon her to create "that holy thing" which would be called the Son of God.

Before that incarnation, "The Word" of the Lord had existed, with God the Father magnifying The Word above all His name. The LXX credits Haggai and Zechariah with addressing the LORD in this Psalms 138:2 verse. "I will worship toward thy holy temple, and praise thy name for thy lovingkindness and for thy truth: for thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name." Christ said it would be the truth of The Word which would sanctify the believers (John 17:17). No wonder that Jesus in His exalted state, the one whose name was called "The Word of God" in Rev. 19:13, was also called "Faithful and TRUE" in Rev. 19:11.
Last edited by 3Resurrections on Thu Feb 28, 2019 11:23 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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Proverbs 30, and Jesus' pre-incarnate "sonship"

Post by darinhouston » Thu Feb 28, 2019 11:20 pm

mattrose wrote:I haven't read through this thread, but I just recently finished Matthew Bates book on the Trinity and it seems to me that he pretty convincingly demonstrates the eternal sonship of Jesus if one is willing to presuppose the NT authors and early church fathers were good at hermeneutics.
I haven’t read the book. But I watched an extended interview with the author about it. I didn’t hear anything approaching an argument for eternal sonship. He did make a (rather weak in my opinion) case for pre-existence (which is consistent with Arius). But I also didn’t see him arguing for the apostle’s “good hermeneutics”. He acknowledged that they were often aided not with normal hermeneutics but spiritual revelation. He also had a rather (admittedly) novel hermeneutic he was applying to suggest that OT prophetic passages and the like were examples of Jesus and The Father in dialogue and that sort of thing. But he even admitted it was equally possible that these were spoken of in the present but about events occurring in the future. It was a very interesting conversation. But not very compelling towards either eternal sonship or the Trinity in general. He did have a statement that really bothered me and he lost a. Good deal of credibility with it to my mind. He said of the numerous passages dealing with Trinitarian concepts that there may be 50/50 arguments for each that could support non-Trinitarian concepts. But that these probabilities added up and made the non-Trinitarian position unlikely. Statistically/logically, however, that cuts both ways and so is no proof at all. That was kind of odd coming from an engineer.


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Re: Proverbs 30, and Jesus' pre-incarnate

Post by mattrose » Fri Mar 01, 2019 8:50 am

darinhouston wrote:I haven’t read the book. But I watched an extended interview with the author about it. I didn’t hear anything approaching an argument for eternal sonship. He did make a (rather weak in my opinion) case for pre-existence (which is consistent with Arius). But I also didn’t see him arguing for the apostle’s “good hermeneutics”. He acknowledged that they were often aided not with normal hermeneutics but spiritual revelation. He also had a rather (admittedly) novel hermeneutic he was applying to suggest that OT prophetic passages and the like were examples of Jesus and The Father in dialogue and that sort of thing. But he even admitted it was equally possible that these were spoken of in the present but about events occurring in the future. It was a very interesting conversation. But not very compelling towards either eternal sonship or the Trinity in general. He did have a statement that really bothered me and he lost a. Good deal of credibility with it to my mind. He said of the numerous passages dealing with Trinitarian concepts that there may be 50/50 arguments for each that could support non-Trinitarian concepts. But that these probabilities added up and made the non-Trinitarian position unlikely. Statistically/logically, however, that cuts both ways and so is no proof at all. That was kind of odd coming from an engineer.
Three points...

1. He doesn't claim that the hermeneutic he's using is novel. Quite the opposite. He believes prosopological reading was quite common in the ancient world and demonstrates that it was used routinely in the early church.

2. In the book, the tense is an important part of his argument. He believes that the divine dialogues demonstrate, because of tense, that Jesus was already the Son in Old Testament times. If the debate in this thread is more about whether the 'Son' existed before creation, ok. I thought, based on title, it was just about the pre-incarnate sonship.

3. I think, when dealing with theology, we shouldn't really think in terms of proof (at least not in the 100% fact sort of way). Theology is more an art than a science. Evidence builds momentum. For me, the evidence is always accumulating for some sort of classical trinitarianism, but i could be wrong.

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Re: Proverbs 30, and Jesus' pre-incarnate

Post by darinhouston » Fri Mar 01, 2019 4:32 pm

mattrose wrote: Three points...

1. He doesn't claim that the hermeneutic he's using is novel. Quite the opposite. He believes prosopological reading was quite common in the ancient world and demonstrates that it was used routinely in the early church.
That's a fair point -- however, at least in the interview, while he believes this was a common way of writing at the time, he noted it is a fairly new discovery or idea in NT Studies to see it this way (even if early Christians may have recognized it). He did acknowledge that the apostles weren't necessarily viewing OT scripture (particularly prophetic literature) with a normal exegesis even if might be more attuned to this sort of exegesis, but instead of using a natural hermeneutic were frequently speaking not from a hermeneutic but from a spiritual revelation and breathing new life into a prophetic statement that wasn't necessarily what would come from a natural hermeneutic (whether or not the original author was writing prospologically). I'm sure this is laid out better in the book. He also mentioned he had written the book years ago and had forgotten a lot he had written, so maybe his views have changed a bit since he wrote it.
mattrose wrote: 2. In the book, the tense is an important part of his argument. He believes that the divine dialogues demonstrate, because of tense, that Jesus was already the Son in Old Testament times. If the debate in this thread is more about whether the 'Son' existed before creation, ok. I thought, based on title, it was just about the pre-incarnate sonship.
Yes, this thread is really pertaining to pre-incarnate sonship, but your note suggested he was attempting to prove an eternal sonship.

Yes, he discussed tense but acknowledged that even the tense could be seen as speaking of the future as if it were now merely because of its prophetic certainty. Steve comments on this often.
mattrose wrote: 3. I think, when dealing with theology, we shouldn't really think in terms of proof (at least not in the 100% fact sort of way). Theology is more an art than a science. Evidence builds momentum. For me, the evidence is always accumulating for some sort of classical trinitarianism, but i could be wrong.
Yes -- I guess evidence is in the eye of the beholder.

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Re: Proverbs 30, and Jesus' pre-incarnate "sonship"

Post by Homer » Thu Mar 07, 2019 11:04 am

I have been waiting for someone to respond to 3Reurrections post on 2/28. I thought she made some interesting points which haven't been responded to.

She wrote:
Because of this necessity for the Son to be sharing the same type of human body form with those He represents, then if we had an "eternal sonship" existing before humanity and the world was established, this would have been pointless. We can't have an "eternal Son" without also having an "eternal Mother" to produce that "eternal Son". That idea veers off into the whole goddess thing (which Mary was not).


It would seem logical to have a mother if there is a son.
Before that incarnation, "The Word" of the Lord had existed, with God the Father magnifying The Word above all His name. The LXX credits Haggai and Zechariah with addressing the LORD in this Psalms 138:2 verse. "I will worship toward thy holy temple, and praise thy name for thy lovingkindness and for thy truth: for thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name." Christ said it would be the truth of The Word which would sanctify the believers (John 17:17). No wonder that Jesus in His exalted state, the one whose name was called "The Word of God" in Rev. 19:13, was also called "Faithful and TRUE" in Rev. 19:11.
If we believe the scriptures are inspired (and I believe there is no other way to understand how John would describe the pre-incarnate Jesus as "The Word") then it would seem obvious that John choose the very best descriptor available. A person and his word are as close and intimate as an expression of the person can be. Jesus is the very truth, the word of God.

The following verse hasn't been mentioned but it would seem to weigh heavily in this discussion:

Luke 1:31-35 (NASB)
31. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name Him Jesus. 32. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David; 33. and He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and His kingdom will have no end.” 34. Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I ]am a virgin?” 35. The angel answered and said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy Child shall be called the Son of God.

It seems obvious that the sonship of Jesus came to be just as Luke has stated it.

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Re: Proverbs 30, and Jesus' pre-incarnate "sonship"

Post by Paidion » Thu Mar 07, 2019 9:05 pm

Hi Homer, you wrote:Luke 1:31-35 (NASB)
31. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name Him Jesus. 32. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David; 33. and He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and His kingdom will have no end.” 34. Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I ]am a virgin?” 35. The angel answered and said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy Child shall be called the Son of God.


It seems obvious that the sonship of Jesus came to be just as Luke has stated it.
Yes, Homer, that passage seems to affirm that Jesus was called "The Son of God" because the virgin became pregnant and bore Him. That in itself suggests that He was not the Son of God before His birth.

Yet, clearly He existed prior to His birth. He said to His Father:
And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed. (John 17:5 ESV)

So what relation did He bear to His Father prior to His birth if not Sonship?
Was He the same Individual as His Father? That could hardly be, since on earth He talked to His Father as to another Individual.
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Re: Proverbs 30, and Jesus' pre-incarnate "sonship"

Post by darinhouston » Fri Mar 08, 2019 9:39 am

Some of those who deny Christ’s pre-incarnate existence (in whatever form) would suggest that John 17:5 is referring to Christ praying that what was “with” God was the Logos, the plans or prophecies of the glories of Christ and those who would be “in Him.”. Akin to praying that God’s will be done on earth as in heaven. Those who read this passage in a pre-existence context don’t seem to argue for the pre-existence of other Christians when they read in 2 Timothy 1:9, for example, that each Christian was given grace “before the beginning of time” and don’t exegete other passages such as the lamb being slain from the foundation of the world and the like in the same way. I think that’s because of a predisposition of reading something into the passage that’s at least not clearly consistent with the main stream of scripture. If Christ had, for example, a conscious awareness of his pre-existence I would expect that to color His every discourse and would at least impact the ways in which He could be tempted in all respects like us. Scripture suggests He grew in Wisdom like we would - not that He had a supernatural understanding of pre-incarnate existence. I think the burden is on those suggesting otherwise.

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