Who is Jesus? Robert A. Herrmann Ph.D. 27 DEC 2007

What does it mean to state that Jesus is the Son of God? This statement occurs over forty times in the New Testament. In the Greek language, the term "son" need not correspond to a biological son nor an adopted son. If an individual A had nearly the same characteristics as an individual B, then B could refer to A as his "son" and A could refer to B as his "father." Apparently, this is how "Son" should be interpreted in these many cases, but in the strongest possible sense.

The Scriptures state that "Christ is the image of ('the invisible' in the Sinaitcus Codex) God," 1 Cor. 4:4, and "He is the image of the invisible God," Col. 3:10. Relative to these two Biblical statements, Vine (1940) states, relative to such an image that it is "essentially and absolutely the perfect expression and representation of the Archetype, God the Father," and that "Christ is the visible representation and manifestation of God to created beings." Hence, for the set of Godhead characteristics that are restricted to the created universe, let the restricted Father characteristics be denoted by FA, and let the restricted Son characteristics be denoted by RS. The Spirit of God characteristic, like the immortal human spirit, is considered as a type of restricted characteristic. (The man "Jesus" has characteristics that are not Father characteristics, such as various human characteristics. Indeed, when Jesus "speaks" one needs to determine whether He is displaying His physical and only human characteristics, or His restricted Father characteristics.) The most important first step is to realize that RS and FA are the same set of characteristics. Or in symbolic form

RS = FA.

It is now possible, through mathematical (i.e. classical) reasoning, to add a most significant property to this equational statement. Recall that in John 14: 15-20, Jesus states explicitly that the indwelled Holy Ghost will display His attributes. Moreover, God is teamed as "perfect" in the sense of "complete." Further, Heb. 2:10 states that Jesus was made "perfect through suffering" (NIV) and such a "completion" is restated in Heb. 5:9 "once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation" (NIV). And, we find in Heb 7:28 that His perfection is "forever" (NIV). Notice that it is Jesus' human characteristics that were allowed to suffer physically and die on the cross. This allowed His suffering and death to be substitutional in character.

It has been determined using this notion of "perfect" and a basic modeling technique that from a Scriptural "third-heaven" (God's pure supernatural) viewpoint, there is no comprehensible difference between the risen supernatural Jesus characteristics and the characteristics of the Father and the characteristics of the Holy Ghost.

For a further and more in-depth discussion of how these characteristics are scientifically modeled, see the article on Modeling Divine Attributes.

Reference

Vine, H. E. Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words, Revell, New York, 1940.