Chapter 7 - Son Of God

‘The Divine Lord says: “A portion of Myself hath become the living Soul in the world of life from time without beginning.”
     —Bhagavad Gita, XV, 7.

It is a general belief among Christians that nearly two thousand years ago the only begotten Son of God descended upon this earth to save the souls of sinners from eternal perdition. Thoughtful people, however, may wish to enquire into the true significance of this expression ‘Son of God’. Again and again are asked the questions: ‘Why should Jesus the Christ alone be called the only begotten Son of God?’ ‘In what sense was he the son of the heavenly Father?’ ‘Is not every individual a child of the heavenly Father, when it is said in the fourteenth chapter of Deuteronomy, ‘Ye are the children of the Lord your God’; or, when Moses said, ‘Is not he thy father that hath brought thee, hath he not made thee and established thee?’ (Deut. xxxii, 6). And the Hindu asks: ‘Why should we not recognize the divine sonship in Krishna, Buddha, Ramakrishna, and in other Saviours of the world?’

All these and similar questions disturb the minds of those who are not satisfied with the sectarian explanations regarding the sonship of Jesus the Christ, which they have been hearing over and over again from their childhood. Of course, we have nothing to say to those whose minds are contented with such explanations, or who believe in the literal meaning of the passages descriptive of the supernatural birth and miraculous deeds of the only begotten Son of God. But, there are many who do not believe in miracles, who do not accept anything upon heresy, or, because it has been written in a certain book or been declared by a certain great personage. They wish to go to the very bottom of things, before they accept them as true; they want to know in what sense the divine sonship of the heavenly Father was understood by Jesus of Nazareth and his direct disciples.

It is extremely difficult for any one to know exactly what Jesus meant by his sonship since he has left no writings of his own. We can only gather some idea from the interpretations of his followers and from the writers of the four authentic gospels. After studying carefully the synoptic gospels, we learn that there were among the authors of these books two conceptions of the Son of God. Matthew and Luke accepted Jesus the Christ as the only begotten Son of God because of his supernatural birth, which was caused by the inscrutable power of the heavenly Father. According to these two gospels, it was a miracle; and upon this miraculous conception of Mary and the supernatural birth of Jesus depends the popular meaning of the divine sonship of Jesus the Christ. All the orthodox sects and denominations of Christianity, accepting the miracles described in Matthew and Luke as literally true, give this miraculous birth as the reason why Jesus alone should be called the only begotten Son of God. They do not recognize that other Saviours of the world, like Buddha and Krishna, had a similar supernatural birth and that their deeds were as miraculous as those of Jesus the Christ. If we ignore them, it will be quite easy for us to accept Jesus the Christ as the only begotten Son of God.

The other conception of the Son of God which we find in the fourth gospel, has a very deep philosophical significance. Before we discuss this point, let us understand clearly what conception of God the Jews had both before and after the time of Jesus the Christ. We know that the Jewish idea of God was at that time purely monotheistic. The God of Judaism was the creator and governor of the universe; He dwelt in a heaven far above mundane existence; He was so high and separate from the world, so extra-cosmic, so great, so majestic and so transcendent, that no one could approach Him, no one could live after seeing Him face to face. Consequently, there was a wide gulf of separation between God and man, between the Creator in heaven and the creature on earth. The idea of divinity in man was unknown to the Jews; such an idea would have been considered blasphemous by them. The Jews could never believe that Yahveh [Yahweh] would stoop so low as to come down on the human plane or to live in a human form. The same spirit prevails among the Jews of today, and it has also been inherited by the Mohammedans. According to them, God is far above man, no human being can ever represent His divinity, and there can be no other relation between man and God, between the creature and his creator, than that of a servant to the all-powerful master, or that of a subject to the most tyrannical monarch. The passages that have been quoted from the Old Testament like, ‘Ye are the children of God', meant nothing more than the fatherly goodness of the Creator and the implicit obedience of the creature, as that of a dutiful son to his father. They were never meant in the sense in which the Christians understand the divine sonship of Jesus the Christ. Through the paternal goodness of Yahveh, Abraham became the friend of God and Adam became the son of God, as described in the thirty eighth verse of the third chapter of Luke.

Nearly two centuries before the advent of Jesus the Christ, when the Jews came in contact with the Greeks, they found in Greek mythology a belief in Zeus-pitar or Jupiter, who was conceived as the supreme Deity and the Creator of the universe. He was not only the father of the gods and of the whole world, but also the father of the most powerful kings and heroes, who were called the children or the ‘offspring of Zeus’ in the literal sense of these terms. We all know that the gods of Greek mythology could marry mortal women of virtuous character and could beget children, while mortal men were allowed to marry goddesses. Aeacus, for instance, was born of Aegina, but his father was Zeus the supreme Deity; while Achilles was the son of the goddess Thetis by a mortal father named Peleus.

These ideas, however, were not acceptable to the Jews; on the contrary, they were considered as blasphemous and were rejected by the orthodox Hebrews. History nevertheless tells us that the worship of Zeus-pitar or Jupiter was introduced into Babylon and Northern Palestine by Antiochus Epiphanes between 175 and 168 b.c.. The orthodox Jews revolted against this innovation; still there were many liberal-minded Jews among the Pharisees who liked the idea, accepted it, and preached it. Among these was Rabbi Hillel, one of the most prominent of Jewish priests of that epoch, who lived a few years before Christ and died when Jesus was ten years of age. He was considered by many scholars as the true master and prede-cessor of Jesus and was held in great esteem by the Pharisaic sect of the Jews. He inculcated the belief in the merciful and fatherly character of Yahveh like that of Zeus-pitar, and it was he also who introduced the golden rule for the first time. At the same moment Philo and the neo-Platonist Jews in Alexandria were teaching the fatherly character of Yahveh and the only begotten sonship of the Greek Logos or the Word.. Philo was a contemporary of Jesus, but he never even mentioned his name. Many of the Oriental scholars and higher critics of the New Testament, say that the writer of the Fourth Gospel must have been a follower of Philo, because, in this gospel alone, Jesus the Christ is identified with the Greek Logos which was explained by Philo as the only begotten Son of the almighty heavenly Father.

Some people claim that the Messianic hope of the Jewish prophets was fulfilled in the personality and character of Jesus and that for this reason he was called the Son of God; but critical readers of Jewish history know perfectly well that the Jewish conception of a Messiah had nothing to do with the Christian idea of the divine sonship of Jesus the Christ. History explains to us the social and political conditions of those days which gave rise to the Messianic conception of a deliverer from the sea of misfortune in which the Jewish nation was well-nigh drowned. For centuries the Jews had been conquered and subdued by the Persians, Greeks, and other stronger powers-around them. Social intrigues, political insurrections, rebellions, and constant wars raged in almost every community and kept the people busy for many years before, during, and after the time of the Babylonian captivity. Such a period naturally kindles the fire of patriotism in the hearts of a nation and forces its members to be active in every possible way. The misfortunes and calamities which befell the descendants of Israel, made them remember the promises of Yahveh [Yahweh], which had been handed down to them through the writings of the prophets, and compelled them to seek supernatural aid for the fulfilment of those promises.

The unconquerable pride of the sons of Israel which made them feel that they were the chosen people of Yahveh, the only true God, who was their director and governor, stimulated their minds with the hope that through the supernatural power of Yahveh the kingdom of their ancestors would be restored, that a member of David’s house would appear as the Messiah (the Anointed), and sit on their throne, unite the twelve tribes of Israel under his sceptre and govern them in peace and prosperity. This was the first conception of a Messiah that ever arose in the minds of the Jews. It was the principal theme of the Jewish poets and prophets who lived during the Babylonian exile. The glory of the house of Israel and the earthly prosperity of the worshippers of Yahveh were the highest ideals of the Jews. They did not mean by Messiah a spiritual saviour of sinners from eternal perdition, for they did not believe in eternal life of any kind.

The Christian idea of a Messiah as the Saviour of the world and a deliverer from sin and evil does not owe its origin to the Messianic hope of the Jews, but to the Persian conception of the coming of Sosiosh, who, according to the promise of Ahura Mazda, would appear in the heavens on the Day of Judgment, destroy the evil influence of Ahriman and renovate the world. Some of the Pharisees accepted this idea. Most probably Jesus of Nazareth was familiar with this Persian conception of the Messiah, but at the same time he tried to spiritualize the Jewish ideal by preaching a reign of righteousness and justice, instead of a reign of war and strife between nations, a kingdom of peace and love instead of a dominion of earthly power and prosperity.

Thus we see why the Messianic hope of the Jewish prophets was not literally fulfilled in Jesus the Christ, and why the conception of a Messiah does not explain the true meaning of the Christian idea of the divine sonship of Christ. We have already seen how the Judaic conception of God made Yahveh extra-cosmic and unapproachable by human beings, and how a vast gulf of separation was thus created between God and man, between the Creator and his creatures. Many of the prophets felt it strongly, especially when Judaism came in touch with the Hellenic religion which made God so near and approachable to mortals. Various attempts were made to bridge over this gulf of separation between man and God, between the visible and the invisible; and these attempts eventually resulted in the acceptance of the Logos theory of the Greek philosophers by the Alexandrian Jews, who, as I have already said, lived about the time of Jesus the Christ. The foremost of them was Philo. It was he who first succeeded in showing the conception between the visible world and the invisible Creator through the Logos of the Stoics and neo-Platonists; but, at the same time, he gave a new interpretation to this word.

‘Logos’ is a Greek term meaning orginally ‘word’, not in the sense of mere sound, but also of thought embodied in sound—as when we utter a word, the meaning is included in the sound, since words are nothing but the outward expressions of thoughts which are imperceptible. From the time of Heraclitus, the most ancient Greek philosopher, down to the time of the neo-Platonists, this term was used by different thinkers in various senses. According to Heraclitus, Logos meant fire, which was conceived as the all-pervading essence of the universe out of which emanated the individual soul of man. Anaxagoras understood by Logos the cosmic mind, a portion of which was manifested in the human soul; but the Stoic philosophers who came later, meant by it reason or supreme intelligence. Logos pervaded all matter, and reason or intelligence in man was considered to be a part of the universal reason or intelligence or Logos, through which was established the connection between man and the divine mind. In fact, Logos always signified the nexus between the manifested world and its Cause.

As has already been said, Philo, being brought up in the neo-Platonic school, adopted this Stoic theory of Logos to explain the relation between Yahveh, the supreme Creator of the Semitic religion, and the visible mortal man of this world. But he meant by Logos the ideal creation which existed in the divine mind before the actual creation. For instance, before the creation of light, God said, ‘Let there be light’. These words, however, were merely an audible expression of the thought or idea of light that existed in the divine mind: the creation of the external light was, therefore, nothing but the projection or expression of the idea or thought of light in the divine mind. As this ideal light may be called the connecting link between the gross visible light and the invisible divine mind, so the ideal creation becomes the bridge that spans the gulf of separation between the invisible creator and the gross phenomenal creation, and this idea or thought of the divine mind was the Logos of Philo; it signified the universal thought of the world or the ideal world in the mind of the divine Being before anything; came into existence. Like a dream, the world of ideas appeared in the divine mind and was afterwards projected in physical space, just as a carpenter, before he makes a chair, forms a mental image of it and then projects it outside. Since this Logos or the ideal world was the first emanation or expression of the cosmic mind, it was called the ‘first bom’, ‘the only begotten son’, ‘the unique son’; all these terms, however, were used by Philo and his followers in their poetical or metaphorical sense. According to this theory, the universal Logos included all the ideas and thoughts, or rather the perfect types of all created things that exist in the universe. Before a horse was created, there was a perfect idea or type of horse in the divine mind. We do not see this perfect type in the world; we may see a red or a black horse, a large or a small horse, but we cannot see the ideal horse. What we call a perfect horse is nothing but the nearest approach to the perfect ideal horse that exists eternally in the divine mind. So it is with every created species, thing or being. Before man came into existence, there was an ideal man or a perfect type of man in the thought of God, and its projection or physical manifestation became something like that ideal type, because the gross manifestation, being limited by time, space, and causation, cannot be exactly the same as the ideal type which is perfect.

This ideal, or the perfect type of man, which existed in the divine mind, is eternal and a part of the universal Logos. All human beings, therefore, are more or less imperfect expressions of that ideal man or Logos or the first begotten son of the divine mind. It does not refer to the human form alone, but also to the perfect character or the soul. The individual souls, however perfect or imperfect they may be in the actions of their daily life, are potentially the same as the Logos, or the universal ideal man that existed in God’s mind before creation. Everyone of us is trying to express as perfectly as possible that ideal type of man in whose cast we have been moulded by the divine hand. Each one of us, therefore, is one with that first begotten son of God—such was the original meaning of the ‘Son of God’ according to Philo and his disciples. We must not forget, however, that Philo did not know Jesus the Christ, although he lived at the same time. The writer of the Fourth Gospel, whoever he may have been, was an advocate of the Logos theory of Philo as well as a believer in Christ as the perfect type of man or the incarnate word of God on earth in the truest sense of the term. It was for this reason that he began the gospel with that famous verse, which has created so much confusion in the minds of Christian theologians: ‘In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God’. The meaning of this passage will be clear, if we remember that the author of the Fourth Gospel identified the Word or Logos of Philo with Christ—but not with Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Mary—and that since then this Christ has become the only begotten Son of God.

Furthermore, it should be understood that the word ‘Christ’, like the word ‘Logos’ of Philo, did not at first mean any particular individual or personality, but it referred to the universal ideal type of man, or the perfect man who dwells in the divine mind from eternity to eternity. In this sense the word ‘Christ’ is as universal as the Logos. It is not confined to any particular person or nationality. We must not confound this ideal impersonal Christ or the only begotten Son of God with the historical personality of Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Mary; but we must take it in its true spiritual sense, we must understand that each individual soul, being the expression of the first-born Son of God, is potentially the same as the only begotten Son of God, or the child of immortal Bliss as it is said in Vedanta. When we have realized this impersonal ideal Christ in our souls, from that very moment we have become Christ-like; and it is then that the impersonal Christ, the only begotten son, will be born within us.

Very few of the true Christians can fully understand this most sublime universal meaning of the divine sonship of Christ, and, consequently, of every living soul. It is extremely difficult for them to extricate their minds from the maze of the traditional personality of Jesus of Nazareth. Students of Vedanta, on the contrary, can comprehend this universal meaning very easily, because in Vedanta the question of the historical personality of an individual, however great and spiritual he may be, is not the principal point to be discussed; its sole aim is to lift us above all limitations of personality and to lead us to the realization of the universal Truth or the divine sonship of each indivictual soul. We are all children of immortal Bliss, of the omnipotent and omniscient divine Being. We are not children of some other being, nor are we children of earthly fathers. Parents have not created our souls, but, on the contrary, our souls existed even before the creation of the world. By our birthright, as it were, we possess the claim of divine sonship. No one can deprive us of this right. We may think of ourselves at present as mortals subject to birth and death, to grief, sorrow, and misery; we may call ourselves sons and daughters of men, but the time is sure to come when our spiritual eyes will be opened to the truth of our being as sons of the heavenly Father.

The expression ‘Son of God’ shows in a metaphorical way the extrinsic variety and the intrinsic unity that exist between the soul of man and the supreme Spirit. Outwardly, the child is different from the father, but his whole soul is one with the father. If we can leave out the external and go to the innermost depth of our souls, there we shall see and realize our divine relation, and eventually we shall become one with the supreme Spirit and say, as did Jesus of Nazareth, ‘I and my Father are one’. We must learn that becoming means knowing and knowing is becoming. When we know ourselves as children of earthly fathers, we have become so; and when we know that we are children of God, we become such. This we shall be able to understand better from the parable of the King’s son and the shepherd.

There was a very powerful king in ancient India. By his conquests he became emperor, but unfortunately in the prime of life he suddenly died and within a few months his queen passed away giving birth to his only child, the heir to the throne. The other members of the royal family, in order to usurp the throne, took the babe away, left him in a distant forest, and spread the news that the child was dead. Fortunately, he was discovered by a shepherd who went into the forest for hunting. This man had no children of his own and out of compassion he took the child, brought it home, and gave it to his wife, asking her to take care of it as her own babe. The child was brought up as a shepherd boy; he did not know anything of the secret, he called the shepherd his father, played with other shepherd boys and did his best to help his father in his work and to earn a share of his living. He felt some times very miserable and unhappy, but he did not know anything better.

After a few years, when he grew older, he happened to meet the old prime minister of the deceased emperor. The minister, who knew the whole secret, at once saw in the face of that young shepherd a resemblance to the emperor and instantly recognizing him, addressed and honoured him as the prince and heir to the throne. The shepherd youth looked at the minister in great amazement and could not believe his statements; but the minister persuaded him to come to the palace, made him sit on his father’s throne and asked him to take care of the property and govern the empire. Gradually the mind of the young shepherd woke up, as it were, from a dream and he realized that he was the only son of the emperor, governed his empire, and became the emperor.

Even so it is with us, being children of the Emperor of the universe, we have forgotten our birthright and are acting like the shepherd boy. The moment that we know who we are and what we are, that very moment we shall become conscious of our divine heritage and shall understand that in reality we are not children of earthly parents, but of the Father of the universe. No one can deprive us of this divine birthright.

All the great Saviours of the world, like Krishna, Buddha, Christ, were conscious of their divine sonship from their childhood and never forgot it. They were like the prime minister; they came to the shepherd boy of the human soul to give the message of truth, that it is not the son of the earthly shepherd father, but of the Emperor of the universe. Let us enter into our divine heritage and rule our heavenly empire. Let us become like the Emperor of the universe. Let us follow the paths of the great Saviours of the world, each one of whom manifested in his life the perfect type of man, the ideal man, the Word or Logos. Let us obey their instructions and, by manifesting divinity through humanity, let us become perfect even as the Father in heaven is perfect; then we shall be happy both here and hereafter, and shall attain to that everlasting Bliss, which is the goal of all religions.