The Highway Forums General Discussion Theology Discussion Forum Lordship Salvation

(Fred) I do find it interesting that we never received one of those moderator "off topic" rebukes seeing that the name of this thread is Lordship Salvation and the eternal sonship of Christ is unrelated. But I digress.

Just some final thoughts on this because I think the discussion is winding down. John did not deny the sonship of Jesus Christ. If you read his retraction statement and the section in the Hebrews commentary where he addressed this, the issue for John is the "when" did Jesus take on the role as a son. Was Christ always "the son" even before God decreed to redeem a sinful people unto himself? Or was that role entered into by the second person of the Trinity when the decree to redeem a people was set into divine motion, so to speak? John specifically stated that the word "begotten" is a difficult term to grasp. What excatly does it mean that Christ was "the only begotten son?" Obviously, from the entire testimony of scripture it does not mean that Christ was created, so it must have some other designation connected to it. In John's mind, at the time of teaching through Hebrews, his understanding was that it had incarnational connotations. Thus, the title of the "begotten son" was an incarnational title, not one that the Second person of the Godhead held BEFORE the decree to redeem and Christ was appointed to step into humanity.

Some other posters have mentioned the divine word of John 1:1. Was the second member of the trinity eternally thought of as the Godman Jesus? Or was that a role he entered into at the incarnation. The decree to die for sinners had always been in place, but God became man (as you pointed out in another post) happened at a point in time. When was that point? At Christ's incarnation.

That being said, we must keep in mind that John has changed his position, however, those who do hold to incarnational sonship I do not believe are heretical, nor are they fundamentally denying the ontological relationship of the son to the father. Many of them may be just confused and ignorant of all the language, but those who are not are simply trying to deal honestly with the language of scripture as it describes our saviour's life here on earth as he related to the father.

Fred