Paidion, within reason, we are all free to use whichever language we wish to describe God. If the term ‘God the Son’ is offensive to you, then don’t use it. That is the point of my previous post; we have a freedom to use certain language (or not use certain language) as our understanding permits. We don’t need to reel in the polar extreme and forbid the usage of certain terms.
When NT uses the phrase “ho theos” (the God) without any other modifiers of “God”, it ALWAYS refers to the Father, and never to the Son. NOWHERE does the phrase in the NT refer either to the Son or to the holy spirit.
The use (or disuse) of the definite article, “the”, before God does not prove or disprove the identity of God. This idea, that the absence of the definite article made the reference to a lessor god, was first introduced by E.W. Bullinger and Bishop Middleton. This idea is shown to be false in scripture in Luke 1:35 where “Holy Spirit” and “Most High” are both without the definite article. In Matthew 3:16 - the Holy Spirit is referred to without a definite article, and in Luke 3:22 - with a definite article. Again, in John 7:39 the Holy Spirit is referred to with the definite article, and in Acts 1:5 the Holy Spirit is referred to without the definite article. Also in John 14:26 the Holy Spirit is referred to with the definite article.
Professor Gordon Fee explains why there is a distinction of the usage of the definite article:
“the presence of the article ‘the’] with the Spirit is always controlled by whether the noun it modifies is articular [has the definite article] or not, not by a distinction between ‘a spirit’ and ‘the Spirit’.”
Colored emphasis added…
This ‘definite article’ theory was not used by the early church fathers to distinguish between persons of the Godhead, and it should also be rejected today. It is sit on very shaky ground, and it is contradicted by scripture itself.
And NOWHERE in the scripture does the word “God” refer to a Trinity.
Again, this is a very unstable argument. The trinity is a word which describes the unique relationship between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. There are many different models of the trinity that can be used, even the one that you use, Paidion, which rejects the Holy Spirit. I personally had problems with the term because of its association with gnosticism, as the 2nd century gnostic (and bishop), Valentinus, had proposed a model of the trinity which was eventually adopted by the bishops of Rome, and it is very close to the Nicene model of the trinity that the entire churches have now succumbed to, as confessed by Marcellus of Ancyra:
Now with the heresy of the Ariomaniacs, which has corrupted the Church of God… These then teach three hypostases, just as Valentinus the heresiarch first invented in the book entitled by him ‘On the Three Natures’. For he was the first to invent three hypostases and three persons of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and he is discovered to have filched this from Hermes and Plato."
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentinus_(Gnostic)
It was Valentinus who opened the can of worms and poisoned the trinity well. 2nd and 3rd century Roman bishops, Zephyrinus and Callistus, had first entertained the gnostic trinity; but that alone does not disqualify the usage of the term. There is no need to throw the baby out with the dirty bath water. The term can be used to describe the Godhead as I understand it, as well as it can be used to describe the Godhead as you understand it. The problem lies in the word association, not in the word itself.
Another non-biblical word that is frequently used by christians is incarnation. The fact that the word is not found in scripture does not negate the usage of the term.
Steve