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Question: The Gospels all proclaim that Jesus is not only a son of God, but the Son of God. Do you think Jesus would have said this about himself?
It’s important to first think about what the Gospels are and are not. The Gospels were written 35 to 60 years after Jesus’ death. They are not histories as we think of histories. They are narrating stories about Jesus that had been handed down by the followers of Jesus to guide the beliefs and practices of the followers of Jesus in their day. A clear clue to the nature of the Gospels is found in the Gospel of John, where we read the gospel was written “that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God” (20:20-31).
With this in mind, it is interesting that — so far as I can tell — in none of the Gospels does Jesus unambiguously refer to himself as the Son of God. It is someone else who makes this identification, and Jesus often simply says, “You say that I am.” His response neither affirms nor denies the identification.
Jesus does seem to accept the title of Messiah. There are good reasons for thinking that he considered himself to be the Messiah in a specific sense — namely, as one who has been called to proclaim the coming of the kingdom of God, which would soon arrive.
But it doesn’t seem that he thought himself to be or said he was the Son of God. That was something the Gospel writers proclaimed on behalf of the community that had come to believe Jesus had risen from the dead and therefore must be divine.
If you’d like to explore this topic in greater depth, I recommend a book by Bart D. Ehrman entitled How Jesus Became God. It’s not an easy read, but it’s worth the effort.
