Son of God

Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God—  the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures regarding his Son, who as to his human nature was a descendant of David, and who through the Spirit of holiness was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans 1:1-4) 

          Some people would have us believe that neither Jesus, nor any of His followers, proclaimed Jesus to be divine prior to the Council of Nicaea (fourth century.) They will further tell you that it was inserted by some anonymous writers at that point. A few may even try to tell you that King James was the responsible fraud in 1611. It’s interesting that Origin supposedly referred to Mary as Domina, the female equivalent of “Lord” in the third century, and a variety of writers were referring to her as queen by the sixth century, yet this was never included in the New Testament, which (some will say) was either completely written or at least massively changed to suit the teachings of Constantine, or whatever others anonymously changed the text. With the power that the Roman Catholic Church had over the text for as long as they had it, one would think that it had been adjusted, it would continue to have been adjusted to suit the teachings of the time. 

         Let me note here that I am not saying that Mary is the Queen of Heaven. I’m just pointing out that if adjustments were made, adjustments would have continued to have been made. In fact, if you read a Catholic Bible and a non-Catholic Bible, you may find a few changes, but I doubt you will find the major changes that people claim. No one would have thought that manuscripts could be found that would reveal the truth of the changes. Without the printing press, the normal citizen would not have had a text with which to compare it. It would have been an easy change, and the Roman Catholic Church, with all its power, could easily have considered itself qualified to make such changes.

         Yet the text of Scripture does not elevate Mary. It does speak of Jesus as the Son of God and of Jesus as Lord. That at least suggests to me that the text of Scripture was considered inviolable, sacred before any of the supposed changes were made. To make things worse, we have pieces of manuscript of Romans dated around 200 AD.  In fact, we have pieces of Scripture and quotes from Scripture dating far enough back that if such changes were made later, we would know it. We know there are thousands of variations in the text. Most of them are spelling or transcription errors that do not alter the meaning of the text. They are the equivalent of someone spelling Romans, R-O-M-I-N-S. There simply is no substantive evidence of the sorts of changes people claim were made. 

         There is no reason to assert that Paul did not believe Jesus to be the Son of God, or that he did not believe the resurrection took place. Instead, what we have is suggestions that X might be, and since X might be, we believe X, and since we believe it, it was. Watch so-called scientific documentaries. It’s the same process over and over.