A friend recently asked me if Hebrews 1.1-4 is "adoptionist". Adoptionism is an early Christian heresy which states that Jesus was not fully God and fully human during his entire Earthly life. Rather God "adopted" Jesus as the Son of God at his Baptism, when the Holy Spirit came upon Jesus and filled him with Divinity. Jesus was then "un-adopted" on the Cross, when he died and gave that Divine Spirit back to the Father. This idea raises serious questions for Incarnational and Trinitarian theology. For instance, God does not become fully and truly human from the womb to the tomb in the Adoptionist scheme.
Rather, God kind of "joy rides" Jesus of Nazareth for the "good" parts of his life, treating him like a Divine puppet, and then abandoning him at the time of greatest need on the cross. If this is the case, then not all of human life is redeemed and integrated into the life of God, just the "adult part" of life, until life gets hard as we near death. That is not full salvation for humans. And for God, it is not full empathy nor full solidarity with the human situation. For the Incarnation to be real and meaningful, it must include the entire human life, from the womb to the tomb and beyond. Thus, for these and many other reasons, the Church has rightfully rejected Adoptionism.
Yet, Hebrews was written at least a half century, perhaps more, before a full fledged version of Adoptionism appeared, and at least a couple of centuries before a robust definition of the Trinity and Incarnation was arrived upon by the Church. So, the issues were still not fully defined, and the linguistic boundaries had not yet been drawn on healthy and unhealthy ways of speaking about God in relation to Jesus of Nazareth. In other words, Hebrews is full of language testing the boundaries of what can rightfully be said about Jesus who is somehow God and somehow human at the same time. It is in this context that we find this:
Hebrews 1.1–4 NRSV [1] Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, [2] but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds. [3] He is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word. When he had made purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, [4] having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.
My friend picked up on the idea that this whole passage COULD be read in an adoptionist way. Especially verse 4 where it says in many translations "having become" or even "having been made" superior to angels. The lack of conceptual specificity is precisely why later Church councils would come to more fully and concisely define the boundaries of Trinitarian and Incarnational thought, to help folks steer clear of interpretations that are unhealthy to the soul and damaging to a vibrant relationship with God through Jesus Christ.
Specifically, to deal with the intricacies of verse 4, here is what I said:
Greek, as you may know, has multiple words for all kinds of abstract concepts. In this case, the participle γενόμενος comes from the verb γίνομαι. Specifically, it is a Aorist middle voice participle in masculine singular nomative form. It has a semantic range of “to become, be, be born, be created”. So, the verb γίνομαι can be used to describe the constant state of something (being) or the arising state of something (becoming) depending on the context. In other words, the translation may be wrong.
Instead of the author intending something like this in verse 4: "By such as this he BECAME (was made) better than the angels, by as much as he has inherited a Name that is superior to theirs."
The author could have easily intended something like: "By such as this he IS (exists as) better than the angels, by as much as he has inherited a Name that is superior to theirs."
There is a more common, pedestrian word for the constant state, which is εἰμί: To be, exist (cf. Latin "sum"). But learned Greek dislikes using that word in a way similar to how educated English prose dislikes over using "be verbs", and for many of the same reasons. Thus, the literary Greek of the Book of Hebrews doesn't use εἰμί as often as other writings in the NT, and seems to have a preference for the more nuanced γίνομαι, based on my Greek reading.
For instance, a literal translation of Hebrews 11.6 would be:"Apart from faith [there is] inability to please [God]. For it is necessary for the one approaching God to have faith that "He is" [εἰμί: i.e. God exists] and that he becomes [γίνομαι] a rewarder to those seeking him."
Now, does God suddenly "become" a rewarder in the process of time and history when we make God into a rewarder by seeking God? Is that the intent of the author? Or, is it more plausible that God's eternal nature is a rewarder to those seeking God, and the historic conditions of seeking God show God to be what God always has been?
Given the Platonic nature of Hebrews, I would advocate for the latter interpretation. Because in Platonic thought (which is clearly used in the concepts and vocabulary of Hebrews) it is events in time and space which unveil or reveal the Eternal Nature of Reality which grounds our everyday experience. This is an important distinction. God is unchanging and eternal, but events happen in history which help us grasp in new ways what has always been true in Godself. Thus, in general, when applied to the Divine Nature, I would say that Hebrews' use of γίνομαι means that something occurs IN TIME which reveals what God has ALWAYS BEEN outside of time.
Of course, perhaps the writer of Hebrews was an adoptionist. In which case, the Church followed the wisdom of the Spirit in re-interpreting Hebrews in a way that accords with Trinitarian thought. But I don't think one needs to go that route. There seem to be grammatical reasons to think that, for the writer of Hebrews, what became incarnate in Jesus was eternally "part" of Godself. What "part" that was would have to be worked out in 4 centuries of Trinitarian debates and definitions.
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