Jimmy Higgins

I was driving behind a church van yesterday, and on the back it had John 3:16 written on it, that god gave his only begotten son for us. That got me thinking. What about Adam? God had alot more to do with Adam's creation. He did it with his own hands. He carefully shaped man into clay. If this isn't begetting... I mean all he did was Mary was "knock her up" spiritually. I mean unless you want to believe God went down on a 13 year old...

So was Adam a son of God too?

Marduk

I guess the key word is begotten. He got Mary pregnant somehow. I guess Jesus has his DNA??? Something you don’t get from making things out of clay. The term 'son' or 'sons of God' gets tossed around quite a bit in the Old Testament, usually referring to angels. Ben ha Elohim. Gen: 6. (sp?)

Jimmy Higgins

But how technical must we get? God obviously didn't have sex with Mary. And as well, God was known as the Father of Abraham. So does that count?

But God made Adam more than he made anyone else. He literally begot Adam.

sakrilege

From dictionary.com

be·get
To father; sire.
To cause to exist or occur; produce: Violence begets more violence.


Seems you have a point.

Magus55

All believers are God's children. Jesus is the only begotten Son, because Jesus is the only "child" of God, that is part of God the Father himself. No other human has the unity that Jesus and God do. Since humans are lower than God, and thus His children - Jesus is God's child because He is human, but He is the only "Son" of God, because He is God. I know that sounds confusing but Jesus was the only Human that God was incarnate in - therefore He is the only Son of God.

schu

Not only does it sound confusing, it is simply not understandable. It can only be understood as a fiction. That is the very reason that people around the world are leaving xianity in leaps and bounds. The only reason this country follows Europe in its flight from faith is that many people here imagine themselves free because they are allowed to examine their chains.

Jimmy Higgins

So is he God or is he the son of God?

And this doesn't answer as to how Jesus is God's son in any real way. God begets Adam more than Jesus!
So was he human or god? There is no medium in between. You either are or aren't a god.

Spaz

Well here's the real explanation (as I see it anyway ):

In Judaism there are many "sons of god" like in the OT, etc., and also there was no jesus son of god crap in judaism, so they saw people, being created by god, as being pretty close to god and able to atone their sins.

In Christianity there's only one "son of god" and people themselves are seen as worthless and far away from god, so I guess it's there to stress how people are distanced from god and jesus is close to god so you have to go through him to reach god and get rid of sins.

So when you take the two conflicting theologies and put em together (a la bible) you get a pretty fucked up religion

sodium

This relates to a tendency in Christian theology to make statements about God which are not seen as true in the normal physical way, but true in some mysterious spiritual way. At least that's what Earl Doherty would say.

BTW, Luke 3:38 calls Adam a son of God.

Amos

That's not exactly true. Luke gives us the omniscient genealogy of Jesus wherein the true Christ identity of the God-man image is identified and only in this singular mode of existences is Adam the son of God. In other words, the genealogy is traced back to Adam along the God identity to such as Adam was before the fall.

Notice the Luke does not say that Jesus was son of Joseph but only that "it was supposed" that Jesus was the son of Joseph.

The significance between Mathew and Luke is that Luke goes back to Adam instead of Abraham to indicate that Catholicism was a new religion built upon the divine truth. The words "father of" in Matthew give us the human identity that had been recorded while the words "son of" in Luke give us the Christ/God identity that became know through inspiration and therefore not until after the descend of the HS in Lk.3:22.