The part that is "fallen human ideas" is pretty clear to me. We attach our chronological "time" to everything. But God attaches infinity to His time. "Before Abraham was, I AM." Does this mean that God is a god of the past? Hardly. But it means that He inhabits eternity.

What ramifications does this have? Plenty. It cannot be accurately said that Christ WAS anything--we must say IS. Christ IS the Son of God. Christ IS begotten. When was He begotten? If the question must be answered relative to OUR time, there is only one answer--as a babe in Bethlehem. But before this He was already Promised, and with God, His Word is Truth. A promise is a reality, even before our human time has reached it. It is in this sense in which Jesus has always "been" begotten.

Blessings,

Green Cochoa.

My finite comprehension has no problem in understanding what a beginning is, no matter how far back in eternity this may have happened. So saying that what had a beginning didn1t have a beginning doesn't make any sense at all.

It seems there is confusion as to Christ's relationship with the Father after He took upon Himself humanity and before.

True Christ came to reveal God.

John 14:9 Jesus said to him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that has seen me has seen the Father; how is that you now say, Show us the Father?
14:10 Don't you believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwells in me, he does the works.
14:11 Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me:

It's also true that as a human Christ lived in complete obedience to the Father.
But He was EQUAL to the Father not subject to Him before -- In their sinless eternity they acted in perfect unity without One being in subjection to the other.



Voluntarily, by self degradation, the second person of the divinity took an ever smaller position in the comparison to the first person, God father. He accepted willingly a dependent relationship with Him, the same relationship, which humans have to God. This was an inconceivably large condescension for Jesus Christ. He is God in the fullest and highest meaning of the word.

Now it is no longer possibly for angels or humans who all wear the yoke of obedience, to accuse God-- and say "for you it is an easy thing to be make the highest moral requirements of your subjects while you, yourself live above obedience and are all sufficient in yourself .
You cannot understand our situation and all the difficulties, with which we have to fight to live up to your expectations, you don’t know what it’s like to be a created being in subjection to a higher authority, we do not trust you." No, that charge is forever destroyed, for the Bible explains that Christ, Who is God in the highest sense, was tried "in everything like we, but without sin" (see Heb. 4.15)

It was God, for Christ is fully God, who yet fully and completely took upon Himself humanity, refusing to use the power of His Divinity, and depending totally, as any human must, upon the Father. It was the ONE who was equal in all ways to the Father, Who took on humanity and Who struggled in the Garden to submit His human will to the will of the Father.

Of course in this condescension God the Father was the God of Christ.

But God the Father placed ALL THINGS pretaining to mankinds salvation into the hands of Christ! (see John 13:3)
All things-- principalities and powers are subdued by Christ (1 Cor. 15:28) till all God's enemies are gone.

Yet in the end Christ doesn't boast and say -- LOOK I did it, or try to draw everyone to Himself and away from God the Father! No, instead He remains in His human state, as our elder brother, and points us to the Father.

The Father in turn exalts the Son.
That's what their ONENESS does, it's the total opposite to the sinful human struggle for supremacy. It's awesome to contemplate.

Obedient sons are always subject to their fathers.

Christ was the Son of God before creation, before the fall of Satan.

"And I saw that when GOD said to his SON, Let us make man in our image, Satan was jealous of JESUS."
(1 Spiritual Gifts 17 - Capitals in 1858 original)

"He [Nebuchadnezzar] answered and said, Lo, I see four men loose,
walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt;
and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God." Daniel 3:25.

"How did that heathen king know what the Son of God was like? The Hebrew captives filling positions of trust in Babylon had in life and character represented before him the truth. When asked for a reason of their faith, they had given it without hesitation. Plainly and simply they had presented the principles of righteousness, thus teaching those around them of the God whom they worshiped. They had told of Christ, the Redeemer to come;
and in the form of the fourth in the midst of the fire the king recognized the Son of God."

(Prophets & Kings 509 - 1917)
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Although I have not posted on this discussion (much to the relief of some, no doubt) I do have one question. (And, no, I have not read the entire 6 pages of posts, nor do I intend to.)

Here's my question:
IF God created Jesus, then later promoted Him to divinity, my question is "When do I get to be God." In other words, what do I have to do to also be promoted to divinity?

Good point. I also have no problem comprehending a beginning, though it be nearly an eternity ago. I think this is, perhaps, part of the reason men try so hard to place Jesus in that frame of reference. They simply cannot comprehend a being with no beginning, so they latch onto the smallest hint of one and cling to it.

It is quite possible that the "beginning" here referred to is that point in time when Jesus was committed to becoming one of us and sacrificing His life for us. That is, in fact, the moment when He would have been "begotten." From that Point on, He was a "Son," though at first, only a "Son" of promise, also called the "Promised One."

I can easily enough imagine that there was once a time when He was not thus committed...a time when the Plan of Redemption was not yet securely in place. But that this plan did precede the Creation of the earth is fully evident in the scriptures.

Blessings,

Green Cochoa.

Gordon,

Our Lord did not have the name "Jesus" (nor even "Christ") before God gave this name to Mary. The word "Jesus" does not appear even once in the Old Testament, unless you count "Joshua" to be its equivalent. But Mrs. White doesn't ever refer to "Jesus" by the name "Joshua." However, notice the following references.



How is it that "Jesus" was worshiped by Adam and Eve? Did they know this name?

In the same vein, the "Son of God" is sometimes referred to when looking back to before the time when this title would have been a reality.

In the case of Nebuchadnezzar, I believe his words were either prophetic, or mistranslated. For example, to say "a son of the gods" would be dramatically different than to say "the Son of God."

Numbers 23:19 tells us clearly that God was not a "son of man." That event was still future.

One more reference to "Jesus" before this became His name also seems to explain the final commitment He made to the Plan of Redemption.



Blessings,

Green Cochoa.

)

"For God so loved the world, that He gave his only begotten Son,
that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." John 3:16.

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I asked this in the other related thread to Colin and am now also asking it here to anybody who thinks Christ was created:

Where can this be found in the Bible and/or the SOP?