John wrote:
>If Jesus was not the Son before the incarnation,
>the virgin birth was His rite of adoption
No, because Jesus did not lay aside his divinity in becoming man. The
virgin birth was a miracle of God begetting a son, something that had never
been done before. There was no adoption, but rather a begetting of a holy
son.
You apparently teach that Christ was at one time not the Son. If He existed apart from sonship, this begetting you speak of, is, in effect, a rite of adoption. It is only a role the 2nd Whatever in the Godhead plays to effect the salvation of us all. He was not ---- but now is the son. That is the very essense of adoption. You cannot call it such for "biblical reasons" but that is the effect of your teaching. Not an entirely unwarranted conclusion -- just something I strongly disagree with.
All of us were adopted because we were born children of Satan, but he was
born a child of God from the beginning. Gosh, David, which is it? "begotten son" means "virgin born" or is He the child of God (that would make Him "son") from " the beginning?" Therefore we call him the only begotten son of God. Huh ??
More than simply being confusing, the above seems to equate "begetting" with the English definition of that word "to produce especially as an effect or outgrowth ." rather than the definition of monogeno (only begotten) which has to do with uniqueness (Kittle, Arnt/Gengrich). Christ was the only unique son of God. That He (Christ) claims this sonship as an aspect of who He is, is clear in John 8:54-59
"If I glorify Myself, my glory is nothing; it is my Father who glorifies me ........
Your father, Abraham, rejoiced to My day and he saw it and was glad ....
..........The Jews, therefore, said to him, You are not yet fiftey years
old and have you seen abraham? Jesus said to them, Truly, truly I say
to you, before Abraham was born, I am " (all of this spoken in the context
of being the Son of God.)
John
