the light and hfe of men, and that He became flesh, and revealed his glory as the Son of God. Here it is plain that the Logos or Word is declared to be the Son. And in the eighteenth verse of that chapter it is said, " No man hath seen God at any time ; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father (6 wv €ts t6v k6\- TTov Tov TTttT/jos), He hath declared Him." Here the present tense, 6 u)v, expresses permanent being ; He who is, was, and ever shall be, in the bosom of the Father, ^'. e., most intimately united with Him, so as to know Him, as He knows Himself, is the Son. According to Chrysostom, this language implies the o-vyyeVeta Kat evorr]^ rrj'; ovatas of the Father and the Son, which were not interrupted by his manifestation in the flesh. To the latter class belong such passages as the following : John v. 18-25, where Christ calls God his Father in a sense which implied equality with God. If sonship implies equality with God, it implies participation of the divine essence. It was for claiming to be the Son of God in this sense, that the Jews took up stones to stone Him. Our Lord defended Himself by saying that He had the same power God had, the same authority, the same life-giving energy, and therefore was entitled to the same honour. In John x. 30-38 there is a similar passage, in which Christ says that God is his Father in such a sense that He and the Father are one. In the first chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, it is argued that Christ does not belong to the category of creatures ; that all angels Qi. e., all intelligent creatures higher than man) are subject to Him, and are required to worship Him because He is the Son of God. As Son He is the brightness of the Father's glory, the express image of his person, upholding all things by the word of his power. Because He is the Son of God, He is the God who in the beginning laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of his hands. They are muta- ble, but He is unchangeable and eternal.
There can, therefore, be no reasonable doubt that according to the Scriptures, the term Son as applied to Christ expresses the relation of the Second to the First Person in the adorable Trinity. In other words, it is not merely an official title, but designates the Logos and not exclusively the Theanthropos.
4. Another argument in proof of this doctrine is derived from the fact that Christ is declared to be " the only-begotten Son of God," "his own Son," i. e., his Son in a peculiar and proper sense. Angels and men are called the sons of God, because He is the Father of all spirits. Holy men are his sons because partakers of his moral nature, as wicked men are called children of the devil.
474 PAET I. — THEOLOGY. [Ch. VI. — The Trinity.
God's people are his sons and daughters by regeneration and adoption. It is in opposition to all these kinds of sonship that Christ is declared to be God's only Son, the only person in the universe to whom the word can be applied in its full sense as ex- pressing sameness of essence.
Objections to the Doctrine. The speculative objections- to this doctrine of eternal sonship have already been considered. If Christ is Son, if He is God of God, it is said He is not self-existent and independent. But self- existence, independence, etc., are attributes of the divine essence, and not of one person in distinction from the others. It is the Triune God who is self-existent and independent. Subordination as to the mode of subsistence and operation, is a Scriptural fact ; and so also is the perfect and equal Godhead of the Father and the Son, and therefore these facts must be consistent. In the consubstantial identity of the human soul there is a subordination of one faculty to another, and so, however incomprehensible to us, there may be a subordination in the Trinity consistent with the identity of essence in the Godhead.
Psalm a. 7.
More plausible objections are founded on certain passages of the Scriptures. In Ps. ii. 7, it is said, " Thou art my Son ; this day have I begotten thee." From this it is argued that Christ or the Messiah was constituted or made the Son of God in time, and therefore was not the Son of God from eternity. To this it may be answered, —
1. That the term Son, as used in the Scriptures, expresses differ- ent relations, and therefore may be applied to the same person for different reasons ; or, have one meaning, i. e., express one relation in one place, and a different one in another. It may refer or be ap- plied to the Logos, or to the Theanthropos. One ground for the use of the designation does not exclude all the others. God com- manded Moses to say unto Pharaoh, " Israel is my son, even my first-born." (Ex. iv. 22.) And He said of Solomon, " I will be his father and he shall be my son." (2 Sam. vii 14.) The word son here expresses the idea of adoption, the selection of one people or of one man out of many to stand to God in a peculiar relation of intimacy, affection, honour, and dignity. If foi these reasons the theocratic people, or a theocratic king, may be called the Son of God, for the same reasons, and preeminently, the Messiah may be