Back in June (2010) I wrote a response to this:

Ferguson takes the position that Adam was a son of God prior to the fall. However, he mentions a book that has been relatively difficult to find in years past: Robert Candlish’s The Fatherhood of God. In this work Candlish sets out the opposite position, namely, that Adam was a servant–not a son–before the fall. This issue will not be resolved by simply citing Luke 3:38. We do not, in that text, have any indication whether that was a pre-lapsarian (pre-fall) or post-lapsarian relationship. Candlish suggested that Adam was merely in a state of servitude on account of the covenant of works. He would have, in light of this view, obtained sonship if he had obeyed with regard to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (i.e. when he was tested by God and tempted by Satan). [my boldface]

I disagreed. Luke 3.38 is crystal clear and making the concept of servanthood some sort of short-hand for a “covenant of works” relationship is unwarranted and question-begging. I wrote:

The chronology of when Adam might have been given the title of “son” (“whether that was a pre-lapsarian (pre-fall) or post-lapsarian relationship”) is irrelevant. The relationship is by virtue of origin. Seth is Adam’s son because he came from Adam and Adam is God’s son because he came from God.  In both cases they received their life from the other.  There is no suggestion here that there is some kind of “adoption.”  The issue is birth and origin. Adam was God’s son by virtue of God’s creation.  Adam after all was created in the image of God, and that is a mark of sonship: “When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth” (Genesis 5.3).

However, none of this means that we have to choose absolutely between son and servant.  There are times when those two relationships can be mutually exclusive, when a servant is not a son (as when the Prodigal Son asked to be let back in the home).  But Paul says that all children are like servants in their immaturity (Galatians 4.1).  Sons obey their fathers.

Nor does this term have any bearing at all on “the covenant of works.”  When Paul claims to be a bondservant of Christ he is not claiming to be in a covenant of works with Christ (Romans 1.1).  So tying the alleged status difference of son to servant has no bearing on anything.  It is confusion to even frame the question in this way.

Jesus was both the son of God and the servant of the Lord from the time (and before) he was born. Paul was both adopted by grace as a son and graciously called to be a servant of God.  Adam could be both as well.

I thought I was refuting a mistaken strand in the Reformed Tradition in favor of a better (and also Reformed) trajectory. It turns out I was contradicting the inspired Roman Catholic philosophy of St. Thomas! I had completely missed Brian Cross’ refutation of, wait for it, Turretin and me.

I’ll skip his critique of Turrettin and quote what he says about me:

Lastly, consider Mark Horne’s objection:

The chronology of when Adam might have been given the title of “son” (“whether that was a pre-lapsarian (pre-fall) or post-lapsarian relationship”) is irrelevant. The relationship is by virtue of origin. Seth is Adam’s son because he came from Adam and Adam is God’s son because he came from God. In both cases they received their life from the other. There is no suggestion here that there is some kind of “adoption.” The issue is birth and origin. Adam was God’s son by virtue of God’s creation. Adam after all was created in the image of God, and that is a mark of sonship: “When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth” (Genesis 5.3).

Mark offers two reason to think that Adam was a son by nature. First, he says that Adam was a son of God in virtue of his coming from God. This is not a good reason, because sharks and geese and flies also came from God, but are not sons of God. Mark’s second reason is the same as Hodge’s, namely, that Adam was created in God’s image, and being made in God’s image is a mark of sonship, as seen in the example of Seth. But, just because the offspring of a man is the son of that man, it does not follow that when God creates a rational creature, this rational creature is a son of God. Implicit in Mark’s argument, therefore, is a [mistaken] assumption that human reproduction is sufficiently analogous to divine creation that truths concerning the former can be applied to the latter. Such an assumption implicitly denies (or fails to take sufficient notice of) the Creator-creature distinction. The interesting about the example of Seth is that St. Thomas (following St. Augustine) makes a distinction between ‘image’ and ‘likeness.’ See Summa Theologica I. Q.93 a.9. Whether St. Thomas is right about that or not, I don’t know and have no intention of arguing. But if he is right about that, then Seth did bear the likeness of Adam because after the Fall Adam had lost original righteousness, and thus Seth, by being born without original righteousness from fallen Adam, was truly said to be not only in the image of Adam as man, but also in his likeness as fallen.

Ok, to the first objection–“sharks and geese and flies also came from God, but are not sons of God”:

1. Read Genesis 1. Animals did not come from God in the same way that Adam did. His creation is singled out as personal sculpting along with mouth-to-nose suscitation. (And subsequent generations have nothing to do with anything)
2. And since Luke makes the comparison, I think he deserves more consideration. Luke singled out Jesus as “son” and then tells us that Adam was “son.” Go tell him about sharks, geese, flies, or any other animal that comes to mind.

And the second objection–“Implicit in Mark’s argument, therefore, is a [mistaken] assumption that human reproduction is sufficiently analogous to divine creation that truths concerning the former can be applied to the latter. Such an assumption implicitly denies (or fails to take sufficient notice of) the Creator-creature distinction.”

1. If I was arguing for an Arian heresy or that Adam was a member of the Trinity; this would be cogent.
2. But since I’m not doing any such thing, claiming that the “image” language in 5.3 is supposed to tell us nothing about the only previous time it is mentioned is simply not cogent.
3. And again Luke seems to have noticed it and made the connection. Otherwise, why say that Adam was from God in the genealogy of Jesus. Genesis 1 says nothing about sonship. The only link is to Seth’s sonship.

Of course, Bryan does prove that I am no true Presbyterian. He shows I had a chance to accuse a nominally Reformed blog of being crypto-Roman-Catholic. No real Calvinist blogger would ever let such an opportunity pass him by.

All kidding aside, I am still not seeing any compulsion to worry about nature and “supernature” the way that Bryan does. I’ll have to study it more some time.