Yet it also remains true of Jesus that
he has a God of his own. Earlier there was reference to Heb 1:8 in which Jesus
is apparently called θεος. The very next very says: “You have
loved righteousness and hated lawlessness; therefore God, your God, has
anointed you” (v. 9; cf Ps 45:7). Jesus arguably is not thought of as God by
nature, since God by nature can have no God. There is no one above God to whom
God might show deference. It is also possible to return to the argument from
chapter 3. If a is the God of b, then a cannot be the same
God as b. If the Father is the God of Jesus, then Jesus cannot be the
same God as the Father. One cannot even say that in orthodox trinitarian
theology the Father is the God of the Son, since this would imply an ”Arian”
kind of subordination between the υποστασεις.
They are supposed to be one God, equally worthy of worship and glorification.
Neither can one say that here there is a reference to Jesus’ God from the point
of view of his human nature. If Jesus is God, then he is equal to the Father
and the Father is not his God, and if he does not cease to be God in becoming
human, then this fact about him would not have changed subsequent to his
incarnation. But in addition to the arguments given earlier against partitive
exegesis, this proposal will not work for two further reasons. First, if one
thinks that Jesus’s human nature is the θεος of Heb 1:8
who is said to have a God in v. 9, then this implies the concession that a
human being or human nature can be called θεος, so that this text would provide no evidence
of Christ’s substantial deity. Second, it is not the nature but rather the
person who has a God whom he or she serves. “Being the God of x” is a
relation that obtains between persons. If the person referred to as “Jesus” has
a God, and if no person possessing the divine nature can have a God but would
rather simply be God, then either “Jesus” is identified with the human nature,
which is Nestorianism, or else the person “Jesus” does not possess the divine
nature at all. Jesus is rather “god” in a derivative sense, in virtue of the
immortality and reign that has been granted to him by God. He is called “god”
here in the way that he is called “my lord” at Ps 11:1, namely as someone put
in a position of superlative power and exaltation by God himself. This is also
the sense in which Jesus might have been called “a god over all” (Rom 9:5) and
“our great god and savior” (Titus 2:13; cf. 2 Pet 1:2), namely insofar as he
has been deified after the resurrection. (Steven Nemes, Trinity and
Incarnation: A Post-Catholic Theology [Eugene, Oreg.: Cascade Books, 2023],
189-90)
