Continuing his exploration of the historical Jesus, today Ian Elmer is focusing in on two question: "Did Jesus think he was the Son of God?"
Over the few weeks prior to the Seven Deadlies series we have been exploring the question, "Who did Jesus think he was?" by reviewing what Jesus did and said. This week I'd like to begin bringing these thoughts to a close by addressing the specific question: Did Jesus think he was the "Son of God"? In asking this question I am not attempting to subvert the doctrine of Jesus' divinity. But rather my aim is to explore the whole notion of Jesus' relationship with the "Father" as he and his followers understood that relationship in the terms of Jesus self-understanding.
Jesus as "Son of God" in His Own Understanding
My reading of the Gospels suggests that Jesus initially had no clue of his divinity or even perhaps his mission. He seems to have attached himself to various reform movements of the time. We noted a couple of weeks back that Jesus was most likely a disciple of John the Baptist — why else would he be baptised by John, and begin his independent mission only after John's arrest?
I believe that at some stage, either before his association with John or after, he attached himself to the Pharisees. Mark (9:5; 11:21), Matthew (26:25, 49) and especially John (1:38, 49; 3:2; 4:31; 6:25; 9:2; 11:8) all testify that Jesus was called Rabbi (Mk 9:5; 11:21; Matt 26:25, 49; Jn); he had a circle of disciples that looked much like a Pharisaic Rabbinic school (Mk 2:18; 3:14; Matt 9:11, 14; cf. Matt 23:7-8;); he taught in synagogues (Lk 4:16; 6:6, 59; cf. Mk 1:21; 3:1; 6:2; Matt 12:9; 13:54); and after his death we know that many if not most of the first members of the Jesus Movement were Pharisees (Acts 15:5).
Finally, theologically speaking Jesus shares much in common with the Qumran Covenanters whose theology is preserved in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Like them the Jesus Movement was a highly apocalyptic movement that looked to an imminent eschaton (Fitzmyer, 1997; 271-303).
What all this probably means is that Jesus felt "called" in some fashion, but spent his life searching to discover what that call was by attaching himself to all the major reform movements of his day. Of course, if we take seriously the virgin birth, that fact and his knowledge of it alone may account for his quest. But probably a far more important event in Jesus life is what scholars refer to as the Abba-experience (Schillebeeckx, 1991: 256-271).
Jesus' Abba Experience
 Apparently this child's intimate name for one's father, much like our Dada, the Aramaic Abba was remembered by the early Church (Rom 8:15; Gal 4:6) as Jesus' usual way of referring to the Almighty (Mk 13:46). As far as we can tell this religious usage of Abba is unique to Jesus and probably bespeaks a profound numinous experience of radical closeness to God. Indeed, the Father motif permeates all of Jesus' teaching and ministry. The only prayer of Jesus that is remembered in multiple traditions is one where Jesus addresses God in familial terms as "Our Father" (Lk 11:2-4; Matt 6:9-13). Moreover, various other sayings attributed to Jesus that would be considered authentic on other grounds (such as multiple attestation or consistency) present Jesus as speaking of God as "my father" (e.g., Matt 7:21; 15:13; Lk 22:29-30).
If the almighty and utterly transcendent being can be addressed in such familiar terms as Abba — a practice that would have shocked many Jews of Jesus' time — then from Jesus' perspective everything else in life would have been profoundly altered. Schillebeeckx refers to Jesus Abba-experience as the "source and secret of his being, message and manner of life" (Schillebeeckx, 1991: 266-267). Jesus awareness of his "sonship" would have imputed to him a sense of the relatedness of all and "an immediate awareness of God as a power cherishing people and making them free" (Schillebeeckx, 1991: 268). Out of this experience of "sonship" Jesus felt called to heal the sick, free the demoniac, champion the marginalised, and speak up for the voiceless.
Did Jesus Claim to be God?
Having said that can we also suggest that this experience led Jesus to imagine that he was the divine son of God? The short answer is probably "No!" It is a remarkable fact that none of our earliest Christian texts unambiguously declare Jesus as the divine son of God. Even with the Fourth Gospel, which opens with a magnificent hymn (Jn 1:1-18) to the incarnate Word (logos), it is possible to read the notion of the incarnation of the pre-existent Logos as akin to the Greek philosophical concept of the demiurge or the Jewish notion of divine Wisdom (Edwards, 1995: 19-43). The Johannine Prologue represents a Christological understanding that dates from about 70 years after Jesus' own time; but its theology probably relies on even earlier traditions.
There was much that Jesus did say about himself that would form the basis for the Church to later claim a divine status for him. The possibility that Jesus spoke of himself as "son" in a messianic or endtime (eschatological) sense is often dismissed by scholars. "Son of God" was not a common messianic title at the time of Jesus; although the Dead Sea Scrolls do speak of a mysterious, future, kingly figure as the "Son of God" or the "Son of the Most High" (4QpsDan A; cf. Lk 1:32, 35). But we have already seen that Jesus spoke readily of God as "my father", which must have entailed some claim to messianic status as a "son of God" (Meier, 1990: 1323).
 We noted in an earlier commentary that in Mark's "Apocalyptic Discourse" (Mk 13:1-37; cf. Matt 24:1-51; Lk 20:41-47), Jesus speaks of himself as the "son of Adam", a messianic figure found in the apocalyptic book of Daniel (7:13; cf. Mk 13:24-27; Ezk 12:1-20). We noted also that the reference to the "son of Adam coming on the clouds" (Mk 13:16) recalls Exodus (34:5; cf. Lev 16:1; Nm 11:25) where clouds indicate the presence of divinity. Thus, it seems that Jesus saw himself as an agent of God who would, in the endtime (eschaton), be invested with power and glory to establish God's reign of earth.
This motif probably became the initial basis for later claims about Jesus' role in eschaton. Deriving from the earliest stratum of the tradition, Paul's "Kenosis" (emptying) hymn (alternatively the Carmen Christi) in Philippians (2:6-11) does not suggest that Jesus was divine. But it does give an exalted role for Jesus in the unfolding of God's plans.
The first line of the hymn should read in translation: "…though he was in the form of God, he did not consider equality with God something to be grasped at…" (Phil 2:6). Again Greek philosophy and Jewish theology are probably at play. The "form" of God bespeaks the Greek (Platonic) notion of a template that exists in the mind of the divine, the perfect "form" or model of any object that exists on the temporal plain. Thus Christ is being presented here as an "image" or a "reproduction" of the perfect, original model from which God intends to re-form human kind and human society. The question is: does Paul mean the model of God, or the model of some other "form" that exists in the mind of God?
Again, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures (which Paul knew and used) may help us here. The Septuagint (LXX) uses similar language in Genesis (1:26) to describe God's creation of men and women as in the "form of God" — what we traditionally call in Latin the imago dei. Paul favours the motif of Adam as a foil for his understanding of Jesus as the "new man" (Rom 5:17) and the new "image of God" (Col 1:15) through whom life and righteousness was restored to a fallen world (1 Cor 15:22; cf. Rom 5:12-21). This similarity in language suggests that in the Kenosis hymn Paul, as he does elsewhere, presents Jesus as the new Adam (the new template for the perfect human). And unlike the first template (Adam), the New Adam does not attempt to grasp at divinity — as the man and woman in the Garden did by eating of the fruit of knowledge (cf. Gen 3:2). Consequently, this New Adam was raised from the dead and exalted (Phil 2:9-11); while the original Adam was condemned to die.
Jesus as the Incarnate Logos
Paul in Philippians probably makes no suggestion whatsoever of Jesus divinity; and if there is any echo of Jesus being divine it is at best an "Adoptionist" Christology that works against notions of pre-existence. The adoptionist approach to understanding Jesus as divine was a view that would later be held by many early Christians, who claimed that Jesus was born human, and only later became divine. Most often the point at which the divine "adopts" Jesus into the Godhead is at Jesus' baptism, when God's voice is heard proclaiming Jesus the "beloved son" (Mk 1:11; Matt 3:17; Lk 3:22; cf. Mk 9:7; 15:39).
By the end of the century, a far more sophisticated form of Christology developed that held that the divine word (logos) or wisdom (sophia) was Son of God by generation and by nature, but who was historically "enfleshed" in the person of Jesus Christ. The clearest example of this is in the prologue to the Fourth Gospel (Jn 1:1-18), which derives its language from Exodus, where the shekinah (Gk. Doxa) or glory of God dwelt in the "tent of meeting" that contained God's word (the Decalogue or "Ten Words [Commandments]") encased in the Ark of the Covenant (Ex 33:7-11; cf. 26:1-37). Thus, the Fourth Evangelist could say of the Christ event, "the Word of God became flesh and pitched his tent amongst us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth" (Jn 1:14).
The "High Christology" of the Fourth Gospel is a far cry from the earliest understandings of Jesus as the messiah, but it is not such a great leap as some might imagine. Jesus was a teacher of wisdom. His use of proverbs, aphorisms and parables placed him within the Wisdom traditions of Israel (Edwards, 1995: 46-47). But he was no mere sage or wisdom teacher. He spoke of an intimate knowledge of God, whom he addressed in familiar terms as his Abba. He saw himself as the messianic "son of Adam" who was predicted to come at the endtime to usher in the reign of God. As a part of this mission, Jesus healed the sick and forgave the sinner. And in doing so, Jesus claimed to have the power to forgive sin himself, and to know directly, intuitively without the usual organs of mediation (the Temple apparatchiks, Pharisaic rabbis, scribes and lawyers) to know the will of God; to interpret scripture; and to speak the word of God with divine authority. In time, these aspects of his message and mission led his immediate followers to see in this remarkable man a "other-worldly" element that spoke of a divine sonship.
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Bibliography and further food for the journey:
D. Edwards, Jesus the Wisdom of God: An Ecological Theology (Homebush: St Pauls, 1995).
J. A. Fitzmyer, The Semitic Background of the New Testament: Combined Edition of Essays on the Semitic Background of the New Testament and A Wandering Aramean: Collected Aramaic Essays, (The Biblical Resources Series; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997).
J. P. Meier, "Jesus", The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, ed. R. E. Brown, J. A. Fitzmyer, and R. E. Murphy (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1990), 1316-1328.
E. Schillebeeckx, Jesus: An Experiment in Christology (New York: Crossroad, 1991).
J. Still, "The Gospel of John and the Hellenisation of Jesus", Internet Infidels (1995-2006).
URL: www.infidels.org/library/modern/james_still/gospel_john.html
Photo Credits:
"Abba image" Directorio Franciscano (2006)
URL: www.franciscanos.org
"Jesus", Guis's Schneckenhaus
URL: mypage.bluewin.ch/qris/index/themen/humor/humdiv/jesus.jpg
The three images of Christ as Pantokrator: (l-r) from the Monastery at Mt Sinai possibly dates from 6th Century; from Daphne Greece dates from 10th Century; and the Eastern icon on the right is of later origin.
 Ian Elmer is a lecturer in New Testament at ACU National (formally Australian Catholic University). He is also a member of the Centre for Early Christian Studies, and was recently admitted into ACBA (Australian Catholic Biblical Association). His research specialities are Paul and First-Century Christianity. He is the author of published articles in the Australian Ejournal of Theology and in Prayer and Spirituality in the Early Church (a publication of the Centre for Early Christian Studies). He is currently completing a doctoral thesis, entitled Paul, Jerusalem and the Judaisers: The Galatian Crisis in its Broader Historical Context.
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©2006 Ian Elmer
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