sonliness

English

Noun

sonliness (uncountable)

1. The quality of being sonly.
   • 1859 August, “The Piety of Jesus”, in The Christian Advocate: A Monthly Magazine to Plead for an Unqualified Return to the Faith Once for All Delivered to the Saints, volume III, number 8, Edinburgh: J. Menzies; London: Houlston and Wright; Glasgow: J. Brown; Manchester: W. Bremner, page 144:

     In this was evidenced beyond all controversy the divine sonliness of the ever pious Jesus.

   • 1883, Brotherhood, Fellowship, and Acting Together. Further Practical Reflections in Rhyme., London: Elliot Stock; Edinburgh: MacNiven & Wallace, page 12:

     May like obedience, confidence, / Truth, sonliness, and heart, / Constellate here, and radiate hence! / Semblance and chill depart!

   • 1897, William Tatlock, The Revelation of God in Christ and Other Sermons, Preached at St. John’s Church, Stamford, Connecticut, New York, N.Y.: James Pott & Co., page 183:

     Know that He never forgets His children—never says, “My son has made his bed, let him lie on it.” His Fatherhood is infinite. And see how that brings out the sonliness.

   • 1913 January 30, ““Father Abraham””, in Southwestern Christian Advocate, volume 42, number 5, New Orleans, La.:

     While the fatherliness of Lincoln appears, the sonliness of the lad is no less evident.

   • 1925 August, A[lfred] W[alter] F[rank] Blunt, The Epistle of Paul to the Galatians in the Revised Version, Oxford: at the Clarendon Press, page 112:

     6. because ye are sons; i.e. God, having given you the position of sons, also gives you the spirit of sonliness.

   • a. 1961, Percy Grainger, Self-Portrait of Percy Grainger, Oxford University Press, published 2006, page 147:

     My mother was a fair-to-see, clever, feeling-rich, spirit-lit being—a kind of oversoul [genius]. I worshipped her for her high how-ths ((qualities)), for the fun it was to live with her. As a fellow-Australian, as a fellow-agin-the-law-man, as a fellow-art-man, I always took her side, in my own heart. This had nothing to do with love, or sonliness.

   • 1963, Hal Porter, The Watcher on the Cast-Iron Balcony: An Australian Autobiography, Faber and Faber, page 26:

     Better far to regard the moments of lamp-lit peace as an accidentally charming illustration of mother-and-child indicative of nothing except nothing better to do, and displaying nothing except that mothers cannot help enacting motherhood nor sons sonliness.

   • 1993, Henry Sussman, The Trial: Kafka’s Unholy Trinity, New York, N.Y.: Twayne Publishers, →ISBN, page 39:

     As this fable suggests, there is not an overwhelming distance separating filial duty (can we speak of sonliness?) from a maimed exercise of self-interest, and ultimately personal disaster, experienced as self-sacrifice.

   • 1996, James E. Dittes, Driven by Hope: Men and Meaning, Louisville, Ken.: Westminster John Knox Press, →ISBN, page 138:

     Norman’s interpretation of sex as a transformation from dailiness to transcendence is persuasive and important. It might be more persuasive, more amenable to Pat, and open up a richer sexual life for Norm, if there were less reliance on consummation and more appreciation of tease and foreplay. That is the issue between Pat and Norm, and that is the issue where Norm’s life could be enlarged by more appreciation of his own sonliness. Tease and foreplay are in the mode of sonship, the mode of expectancy, and, as such, are authentic and pleasurable in themselves, not just as promises of consummation.

   • 2002, Owen C. Thomas, Ellen K. Wondra, Introduction to Theology, 3rd edition, Morehouse Publishing, →ISBN, page 73:

     The final view in the East can be summarized roughly as follows: a hypostasis is somewhere between a substance and an attribute (e.g., goodness, holiness, etc.). Like an attribute, hypostasis presupposes a substance, and like a substance it has attributes. If hypostasis meant substance, the result would be tritheism. If the word meant attribute (i.e., fatherliness, sonliness), the result would be Sabellianism.

   • 2002 March 6, Eddie Tafoya, “‘Men’s Room’ doesn’t pull its weight”, in The Santa Fe New Mexican, 153rd year, number 65, page B-3:

     They reveal within a few minutes of conversation the sonliness and fatherliness that has been lying dormant within each of them for lo, so many years.