Sharing in the Divine

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What does it mean when God calls Jesus “my Son”? Many modern readers interpret the phrase as a literal reference to Jesus’ virgin birth: Jesus was conceived by God’s divine seed. Others understand it as a metaphor for Jesus’ intimate relationship with God. But how did the earliest Christians understand the phrase?

In the Old Testament, God refers to angels, to the chosen people, to the king, to the messiah, and to the faithful Israelites as his “son.”¹ The phrase clearly designates these people as being joined with God in some kind of special relationship, but obviously the phrase cannot be interpreted literally.

In the Gospels, God calls Jesus “my Son.” Most scholars agree it refers to an exclusive relationship between Jesus and God. But the precise nature of this relationship is disputed. Some say the phrase “my Son” simply designates Jesus as a human being 026who possesses God’s favor. Others say it designates Jesus as a divine being. Still others speculate that it means something in between—a superhuman who is both human and divine. (This was the special contribution of the Council of Nicea in 325 C.E.)

Ancient Jewish tradition suggests another way of understanding the unusual relationship between Jesus and God in the Gospels. Ben, literally “son,” is the Hebrew term for sharing some element of a greater entity and embodying its essence. The same is true of the Aramaic bar, which also means “son.” (Aramaic, closely related to Hebrew, was the vernacular of Jesus’ time.) Thus, in Hebrew, a ben torah is someone who has studied Torah so much that person is said to embody the Torah. Likewise a bar mitzvah (literally, “son of the commandment”) is someone who has reached the age of responsibility and belongs to the category of commandment-obligation. The biblical term “children of Israel,” or bnei yisrael (bnei designates the plural of ben), describes those imbued with the characteristics of the patriarch Jacob (Israel). Angels are called bnei elim, “sons of divine beings,” because they share in the category of divine beings. All people are called bnei adam because they share the characteristics of Adam, the first human. In the Dead Sea Scrolls, people who share in God’s characteristics are called bnei or, usually translated “sons of light.”

When the earliest Christians heard or read that God called Jesus his “Son,” they would have understood this to mean that Jesus shared in God’s attributes, not that he was literally God’s child. According to Midrash Tanhuma (Va’era 8), an early rabbinic composition that elucidates the text of the Hebrew Bible, sharing divine glory means three things: name sharing, power sharing and garment sharing.

For name sharing, the Tanhuma refers to Exodus 7:1, where God is commissioning Moses to approach Pharaoh to demand that he allow the Israelites to leave Egypt. God says to Moses, “See, I have made you as God (Elohim—a name of God and the generic word for god) to Pharaoh.”^a By referring to Moses as Elohim, God shares an aspect of his glory with the leader of the Exodus.

For power sharing, the Tanhuma refers to the story in 1 Kings 17:17–23 in which the prophet Elijah brings back to life the dead son of his hostess. God, of course, also revives the dead and in this instance God shares this aspect of his glory with the prophet.

For garment sharing, the Tanhuma refers to Psalm 21:6: King David speaks to the Lord, “You have clothed him in splendor and majesty.” God clothes the king messiah with his own garments of glory.

The passages in the New Testament in which God refers to Jesus as “my Son” often parallel the divinity-sharing aspects described in the Tanhuma. Being called “my Son” is of course itself a kind of name sharing. Jesus, like Elijah (and like Elisha; see 2 Kings 4), also 027raises the dead (including Lazarus in John 11:1–44). Jesus resurrects Lazarus only after his sister acknowledges that Jesus is the “Son of God” (John 11:27). And at the transfiguration, Jesus’ clothes are as “white as light” (Matthew 17:2; Luke 9:29; Mark 9:3)—just as the Lord’s garments must be.

In the Gospels, the phrase “my Son” is applied to Jesus at only three critical points in Jesus’ life: his birth, his baptism and his transfiguration.

The first instance appears only in the Gospel of Matthew, which tells us that Jesus, as a child, “went to Egypt.” Quoting the Book of Hosea (11:1), Matthew continues: “This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, ‘Out of Egypt I called my son’” (Matthew 2:14–15). In Hosea, the phrase “my son” indicates that during Israel’s childhood God loved the nation; God favored Israel by publicly proclaiming Israel as his son at the moment he was bringing them out of Egypt. When Matthew quotes Hosea, he is giving the prophet’s words meaning in the future as well as the past. Only in Matthew is the infant Jesus taken to Egypt—so that God could lead him out as his son.

Although only Matthew includes this childhood episode, in all three Synoptic^b Gospels—Matthew, Mark and Luke—God calls Jesus “my Son” at his baptism, which marks the beginning of Jesus’ adult career (Matthew 3:17; Mark 1:11; Luke 3:22), and at his transfiguration, where Jesus is literally transfigured and clothed in a heavenly garment (Matthew 17:5; Mark 9:7; Luke 9:35). At both events in all three Gospels, a heavenly voice proclaims: “This is my 046beloved Son.” In Matthew’s baptism story when John baptizes Jesus, “The heavens were opened, and [Jesus] saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And behold a voice from the heavens, saying ‘This is my beloved Son’” (Matthew 3:17; see Mark 1:11; Luke 3:22).^c

At the transfiguration, Jesus ascends a mountain to pray with three disciples. According to Matthew, “He [Jesus] was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly, there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him…A bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, ‘This is my Son.’” (Matthew 17:1–3, 5, 9; see also Mark 9:7; Luke 9:35; 2 Peter 1:17).^d

After Jesus’ crucifixion in Matthew and Mark, a centurion remarks that Jesus was in truth “God’s son” (Matthew 28:54 and Mark 16:39). This is not quite the same as God calling Jesus “my Son,” however. In this passage, the original Greek literally means “a son of God”—a phrase found also in the Wisdom of Solomon, an early-first-century B.C.E. Jewish book.^e Here we read that “the righteous man is God’s son (a son of God)” (Wisdom of Solomon 2:18.) So when the centurion calls Jesus “God’s son” he is simply suggesting that Jesus was righteous. That is precisely what the centurion says in Luke’s version of the episode. Here, the centurion says: “This man was righteous” (Luke 23:44; often translated as “innocent”). So the phrase “God’s son,” too, does not refer to a genetic relationship but to a moral one.

The gospel writers use the term “my Son” in a distinctive way in connection with critical transition points in the Jesus story. The phrase is used in connection with God’s act of commissioning Jesus to a unique 047appointment in his divine entourage.

God has a plan for history. The script had been set out long ago, perhaps from the time that he created the world. But God himself chooses the cast. The final act of God’s drama entails the salvation of humankind. Whom had God cast for this role? He would appoint Jesus to be his son. God proclaimed the role Jesus was to play at crucial points in the narrative. Jesus (like earlier harbingers of sonship—Moses, Elijah and John the Baptist) would understand that the divine script was moving along to the final “Son.” God was both director and producer. Jesus was the star of the final act—commissioned to proclaim the New Kingdom. That was the role of the final “my Son.” This specific meaning of “Son” grew out of an enhanced usage of particular Hebraic understandings of the term “son” that referred to Israel’s divine election.

That is why Jesus is called “my Son” in the New Testament. It was not because divine seed conceived him, but because he shared in the attributes of the divine. He shared God’s glory.

What does it mean when God calls Jesus “my Son”? Many modern readers interpret the phrase as a literal reference to Jesus’ virgin birth: Jesus was conceived by God’s divine seed. Others understand it as a metaphor for Jesus’ intimate relationship with God. But how did the earliest Christians understand the phrase? In the Old Testament, God refers to angels, to the chosen people, to the king, to the messiah, and to the faithful Israelites as his “son.”1 The phrase clearly designates these people as being joined with God in some kind of special relationship, but obviously the phrase […]