"SON OF GOD"
As we have contended before, it is necessary, if we are fully to understand the meaning of the words employed by the men from whom we inherit our religion, to study, and if possible appreciate, the psychological climate in which these men dwelt.
What did such men really mean when they used the expression, "Son of God"? This, if we can answer it, is a question of the highest import to us in our study of Christian origins. We shall be under the gravest of illusions if we accept the phrase as being always used in its plain physical sense, because, as we shal1 see immediately we make any inquiry into the matter, the theologians of two thousand years ago did not always, did not indeed generally, use it with that meaning.
By the Jews the title "Son of God" was not used in a literal sense, but in the same way as the expression "Your heavenly Father" is applied in the Gospels to all men. It was a metaphysical title often applied to saintly and holy men. In the Jewish "Wisdom" literature every pious man is spoken of as a "Son of God," and every pious Jew did regard his God, Yahwe (Jehovah), as his Father. Such words were always used metaphorically; such ideas were spiritual, and had no connection with material begetting and being begotten. When the writer of Psalm ii wrote, "The Lord hath said unto me: 'Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee,' " he meant it in a spiritual sense. It remained for the originators of the Virgin Birth story to use these words in their literal meaning of a physical relationship.
In the Old Testament the Israelites are often referred to as "Sons of God," or as "begotten by God." Israel himself is said to be the first-born Son of God. Deuteronomy xiv, 1, which in our Authorized Version runs "Ye are the children of the Lord your God," reads in the Septuagint version "Ye are the sons of the Lord your God"; and the Septuagint version of Deuteronomy xxxii, 18, has the words, "God who begat thee," in the place of the words, "God that formed thee," of the Authorized Version; and even the latter, which does not always stick so closely to the original Hebrew, has "The Rock that begat thee" at the beginning of the same verse, and "is not he [the Lord] thy father" in verse six of the same chapter.
In the Prophets the term is frequently used in the same figurative sense.
In the book of Job we have an example of its use to denote the servants of God: "Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan same also among them."
Ezra, the leader of the Jews who returned from the exile in Babylon, and the first compiler of the earliest Old Testament books, received from the Jews the title of "Son of God."
Philo the Jew wrote: "And if a man should not as yet have the good fortune to be worthy to be called Son of God, let him strive manfully to set himself in order . . . ." Men, he said, who had not yet become fit to be judged Sons of God, might at any rate be "Sons of His Eternal Likeness" (the Logos).
In the Epistles we find that the same idea recurs. "For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God." " Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God." Therefore, before any Virgin Birth story had been formulated, or, at any rate, apart from any such story, Jesus might be called the Son of God-the spiritual representative of the Deity, "god-child" of the Supreme, and metaphorically heir of the All-Good.
The ancient Oriental theosophists-pre-Christian Hindus -though they varied the terminology, taught the same idea. All men are sons of God, as every individual has in him part of the Universal Soul which is God. There is only one Reality: that is God; that is Life; that is the Universal Mind. And each individual shares in this One Life, in this One Universal Mind, in this One God. That is the old Eastern philosophy, which gives rise to such figurative expressions as "Son of God." That is the conception which was afterwards to be combined by ignorant Westerners with cruder pagan ideas of physically begotten sons of gods.
Further East such terms were used as titles of respect. The Oriental love of hyperbole encourages such grandiose expressions. The "Son of Heaven" was, and perhaps even in these republican days still is, a title of the Emperor of China. Oriental servants still give the title "Father" to their masters. "Master is my Father and my Mother" must have been said many times to every British official who has lived long in India.
Many Old and New Testament phrases should be read as Oriental metaphors, and not as Occidental expressions of scientific fact. We are not, however, the only people who have inherited metaphors materialized. The Peruvians believed that their great god, the Sun, sent down not only a son, but also a daughter, to live on earth with mortal men, and that these two-not only brother and sister, but husband and wife too-were the ancestors of their kings, the Incas. The youthful Incas were always known as "Children of the Sun." Most likely in this case, as in others, the title was given to the Incas long before the story was invented. That would be invented to explain the title, as myths are often invented to explain a ritual.
There is only one passage in the Old Testament in which the expression "Son of God" appears to be intended literally. In Daniel (iii, 25) we are told that one whose form was like the "Son of God" walked with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace. Now, Daniel, though admittedly a very late book compared with the time when the events related in it are said to have taken place, is at any rate pre-Christian, and the Son of God therein referred to could not have been the Jesus of whom the Gospels tell. Neither is it contended by any one that he was another incarnation of Christ. In the Septuagint version of Daniel, which is older and fuller than our abridged and otherwise edited version, the words, "a son of the gods," are used instead of "Son of God"; so it appears that the author of this book believed that Divine personages descended to earth sufficiently often to be recognized as such. Daniel is, however, a peculiar book in many respects, and this exception does not invalidate the argument that the expression "Son of God" was generally used in a metaphorica1 and not in a literal sense. It must be left to professiona1 theologians to explain who was the companion of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and what happened to him when these three came forth from the sevenfold super-heated fiery furnace; as this the "prophet" himself has omitted to do.
Next: APPENDIX III THE LATEST APOLOGIA