In view of this Messianic, spiritual application of the idea referred to, the words of Ps 2^ have been supposed to allude to some typical king like David or Solomon, and the expression, ' Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee,' to denote an act performed by God on the person addressed, as by constituting him king. He had moulded his life afresh and set him in a special relation to Himself. Applied to Christ, this might be taken as re- ferring to such an event as the Resurrection, with reference to which St. Paul says in Ro I'' that by it God ' declared him to be the Son of God with power.' This might be accepted as a fairly adequate account of the Messianic ideas held by the early disciples, and of the interpretation which they were likely to put upon the passage in the Second Psalm, when they studied it, as St. Paul did, by the light of the Resurrection of Jesus. They must have been largely influenced by traditional opinions on the subject of the Messiah, and would therefore interpret the words, ' Tliis day have I begotten thee,' as referring not to any event in a past eternity or to any period prior to the Incar- nation of the Son of God, but to some definite point in the history of His manifestation to the world, as, for example, to tlie period of the birth of Jesus, or of the Baptism, when the voice from heaven declared Him to be God's Beloved Son, or, as St. Paul appears to teacli in liis discourse in Acts (13**) and in his EpLstle to the Romans, to the period of the Resurrection.
Such an interpretation, however, of the passage referred to as we find in the teachings of St. Paul and of the Epistle to the Hebrews, does not ade- quately explain the language of the Fourth Gospel or the author's allusions to the pre-existence of Christ as Logos, and to His relation to the Father as the Only-begotten Son. The Evangelist speaks in such a way of the nature and mission of the Logos or the Son of God as plainly to assume the eternal pre-existence of that Logos or Son. When John, speaking for himself, says in the Prologue (1"), ' The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only- begotten of the Father,' the subject of the sentence is He of whom he has just spoken as having been in the beginning with God, and as having been God's agent in the work of Creation. Again, in v.>» ' No man hath seen God at any time ; the only- begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him,' the expression ' which is in the bosom of the Father ' is apparently meant for a further explanation or definition of the ex- pression ' only -begotten Son,' the present participle 6 iiv signifying, as Al ford puts it, ' essential truth without any particular regard to time,' while the peculiar construction eh rbv KdXiroy, literally ' into ' not ' in ' ' the bosom ' (as might have been expected — ^f Tifi kAXitv), is, as that commentator again points out, 'a pregnant con.structioii, involving the beget-
BEGETTING
BEGETTING
ting of the Son and His being the X670! of the Father, — His proceeding forth from God.' ' It is a similar expression on tlie side of His Unity with the Father to (lid irapa. toD 0eov on the side of His manifestation to men.' Tlie meaning of the pas- sage is that Clirist, wlio is by nature the Son of God, begotten before all worlds, is He who alone could and did declare the nature and the will of that God whom no man hath seen or coula have known apart from such a revelation. Here it is evident that the begetting referred to by the use of the word 'only-begotten' (ixavoyevq^) is different from that which is spoken of in the Second Psalm.
Again, in His discourse to Nicodemus, Jesus Himself alludes clearly to His pre-existence and essential Sonship when He says that God 'gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life' ; and in the next sentence it is added, ' For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world ' (Jn S'"- "). There the words ' gave ' and ' sent ' imply pre-existence on the part of the Son. Similar references occur elsewhere in the discourses of Jesus as recorded in the Fourth Gospel, for example, that of Jn 6*" ' Not that any man hath seen the Father, save he which is of God (lit. ' from God,' TTopo ToC 0eov), he hath seen the Father,' with which cf. v.^ ' I came down from heaven,' and v.^'- ' What and if ye shall see the Son of Man ascend up where he was before ? ' passages which, as H. Holtzmann points out, ' connect the historic with the preter-historic being of the pre-existent Logos — the Son of God, that is, in the theological, not the Messianic sense.'
A comparison of these passages in the Fourth Gospel with Ps 2' shows that the thought of ' be- getting,' as it affects the relations between the Father and the Son, has more than one meaning. Dorner notes even in the Synoptic Gospels three senses in which it is applied — the physical, the ethical, and the official. If we extend our view so as to include the Fourth Gospel, a similar divi- sion suggests itself: the theological, or, as it is sometimes called, the metaphysical ; the official or Messianic ; and the ethical or spiritual. Jesus as Logos is Son of God by nature. Essential Son- ship, eternal generation, is predicated of Him. Then, in a special official sense. His setting apart to the Messianic office is, according to a familiar Scripture figure (cf. Ps 2'), regarded as ' a beget- ting,' that is, the inauguration of a new vocation or a new order of things. This notion of beget- ting is practically the idea conveyed by the word 'Messiah' or 'Christ' itself, and by what Jesus Himself says, according to Jn 10"^ ' Say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world. Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God?' Lastly, the thought of begetting is applied in the sense of a Divine conmiunication of life, as when the Spirit of God descended and abode upon Christ. Thus when the Baptist saw the sign, the dove from heaven alighting upon Jesus, he tells us, ' And I saw, and bare record that this is the Son of God ' (Jn 1^). This third aspect is important as illustrating the point of connexion between the Sonship of Christ and that of believers, the Divine Sonship based on a generation, that is, a Divine communication of life. Each of these aspects has its own significance.