person who had healed the impotent man, and who with eqnal pro- priety could be called God or man, because He was both God and man. What the passage teaches, therefore, concerns the consti- tution of Christ's person as He appeared on earth, and not the nature of the relation of the Father and Son in the Godhead.
C. Eternal Sonship.
There is, therefore, a distinction between the speculations of the Nicene fathers, and the decisions of the Nicene Council. The latter have been accepted by the Church universal, but not the former. The Council declared that our Lord is the Eternal Son of God, i. e., that He is from eternity the Son of God. This of course involves the denial that He became the Son of God in time ; and, consequently, that the primary and essential rea- son for his being called Son is not his miraculous birth, nor his incarnation, nor his resurrection, nor his exaltation to the right hand of God. The Council decided that the word Son as ap- plied to Christ, is not a term of office but of nature ; that it expresses the relation which the Second Person in the Trinity from eternity bears to the First Person, and that the relation thus indi- cated is sameness of nature, so that sonship, in the case of Christ, includes equality with God. In other words, God was in such a sense his Father that He was equal with God. And consequently every time the Scriptures call Jesus the Son of God, they assert his true and proper divinity. This does not imply that every time Christ is called the Son of God, M'hat is said of Him is to be un- derstood of his divine nature. The fact is patent, and is admitted that the person of our Lord may be designated from either na- ture. He may be called the Son of David and the Son of God. And his person may be designated from one nature when what is predicated of Him is true only of the other nature. Thus, on the one hand, the Lord of Glory was crucified ; God purchased the Church with his blood ; and the Son is said to be ignorant ; and, on the other hand, the Son of Man is said to be in heaven when He was on earth. This being admitted it remains true that Christ is called the Son of God as to his divine nature. The Logos, the Second Person of the Trinity as such and because of his relation to the First Person, is the Son of God. Such is the doctrine of the Nicene Council, and that it is no less the doctrine of the Scrip- tures, is plain from the following considerations : —
1. The terms Father, Son, and Spirit, as applied to the persona of the Trinity, are relative terms. The relations which they ex-
472 PART 1. — THEOLOGY. [Ch. VI. — The Trinitt
press are mutual relations, i. e., relations in which the different persons stand one to another. The First Person is called Father, not because of his relation to his creatures, but because of his re- lation to the Second Person. The Second Person is called Son, not because of any relation assumed in time, but because of his eternal relation to the First Person. And the Third Person is called Spirit because of his relation to the First and Second.
2. If, as tlie whole Christian Church beheves, the doctrine of the Trinity is a Scriptural doctrine, and if, as is also admitted by all the parties to this discussion, it was the purpose of God to reveal that doctrine to the knowledge and faith of his people, there is a necessity for the use of terms by which the persons of the Trinity should be designated and revealed. But if the terms Father, Son, and Spirit do not apply to the persons of the Trinity as such, and express their mutual relations, there are no such distinctive terms in the Bible by whicli they can be known and designated.
3. There are numerous passages in the Scriptures which clearly prove that our Lord is called Son, not merely because He is the image of God, or because He is the object of peculiar affection, nor because of his miraculous conception only ; nor because of his exaltation, bvit because of the eternal relation which He sustains to the First Person of the Trinity. These passages are of two kinds. First, those in which the Logos is called Son, or in which Christ as to his divine nature and before his incarnation is declared to be the Son of God ; and secondly, those in which the application of the term Son to Christ involves the ascription of divinity to Him. He is declared to be the Son of God in such a sense as implies equality with God. To the former of these classes belong such passages as the following : Rom. i. 3, 4, where Christ is declared
to be Kara crapKa, the Son of David, and Kara Trvevfxa d.yLO(rvvr]<;, tlie
Son of God. That nvevfia dyiocrw?/; does not here mean the Holy Spirit, much less a pneumatic state, but the higher or divine nature of Christ, is evident from the antithesis. As to his human nature, He is the Son of David ; as to his divine nature. He is the Son of God. As to his humanity. He is consubstantial with man ; as to his divinit}'. He is consubstantial with God. If his being the Son of David proves He was a man, his being the Son of God proves that He is God. Hence Christ was called Son before his incarna- tion, as in Gal. iv. 4, " God sent forth his Son, made of a woman." It was the Logos that was sent, and the Logos was Son. Thus in John i. 1-14, we are taught that the Logos was in the beginning ■with God, that He was God, that He made all things, that He was