The coronation of Jesus
Sitting in church yesterday, listening to an account of Jesus's baptism, it occurred to me that there is a good analogy that works against the adoptionist overtones historically seized upon both by critics and by heretics (but I...). All agree that the use of Psalm 2 paints the scene in royal colors: this is a coronation. The adoptionist reads this in line with Israel's long-standing practice of suggesting that, in some important but mysterious sense, the king of Israel is or becomes God's son upon succession, for to be the human king under the divine king implies a relationship of intimacy and representation analogous to human paternity and generation. The anti-adoptionist reads the scene as both the fulfillment and the archetype of such a practice, for Jesus is uniquely God's Son, naturally and from all eternity. The Gospels (not least Mark) all bear out this distinct status and relationship, from which derive all that Jesus is, says, and does.
How, then, to explain the scene as one of confirmation rather than adoption? By analogizing the event, not with prior coronations in Israel, however similar, but to ordinary coronations. For what happens when the son of a king is himself made king? Does he thereby "become" the king's son, having not been so prior to that point? No. The prince is always the king's son; what remains is for the prince to be crowned king, like his father.
In the same way, the antecedent and eternal Sonship of Jesus is revealed, not bestowed, at his baptism by John in the Jordan. The one and only Son of YHWH is manifested as what he is, not as what he may or could or does become.
Now, does that mean Jesus was not King prior to his baptism? No and yes. No, in the sense that the divine Son, incarnate in and as Jesus, has, as true God from true God, from all eternity, reigned as Lord. But yes, too, in the sense that the human life of Jesus enacts in time what is true beyond and apart from time. Jesus's baptism-coronation crowns him King in the same way and to the same degree that, at the beginning of his life, the Magi pay his royalty homage and, at the end of his earthly career, he is garlanded with crowns and, after being raised from the dead, he ascends to the right hand of the Father in glorious power. Each is a temporal moment in the one revelatory sweep of the royal Son's fleshly rule in and over all creation, precisely as a fellow creature (better: through assumed creaturely nature). None of the moments "make" the Son king; yet without any of them he would not be the incarnate King he is.
Such is the mystery of the economy of the sovereign incarnate Son of God.
How, then, to explain the scene as one of confirmation rather than adoption? By analogizing the event, not with prior coronations in Israel, however similar, but to ordinary coronations. For what happens when the son of a king is himself made king? Does he thereby "become" the king's son, having not been so prior to that point? No. The prince is always the king's son; what remains is for the prince to be crowned king, like his father.
In the same way, the antecedent and eternal Sonship of Jesus is revealed, not bestowed, at his baptism by John in the Jordan. The one and only Son of YHWH is manifested as what he is, not as what he may or could or does become.
Now, does that mean Jesus was not King prior to his baptism? No and yes. No, in the sense that the divine Son, incarnate in and as Jesus, has, as true God from true God, from all eternity, reigned as Lord. But yes, too, in the sense that the human life of Jesus enacts in time what is true beyond and apart from time. Jesus's baptism-coronation crowns him King in the same way and to the same degree that, at the beginning of his life, the Magi pay his royalty homage and, at the end of his earthly career, he is garlanded with crowns and, after being raised from the dead, he ascends to the right hand of the Father in glorious power. Each is a temporal moment in the one revelatory sweep of the royal Son's fleshly rule in and over all creation, precisely as a fellow creature (better: through assumed creaturely nature). None of the moments "make" the Son king; yet without any of them he would not be the incarnate King he is.
Such is the mystery of the economy of the sovereign incarnate Son of God.
