so designated. But this is no argument to prove that the Logos may not in a far higher sense be called the Son of God.
2. The passage in question, however, need not be understood of an event which occurred in time. Its essential meaning is, " Thou art my Son, now art thou my Son." The occasion referred to by the words " this day " was the time when the Sonship of the king of Zion should be fully manifested. That time, as we learn from Rom. i. 4, was the day of his resurrection. By his rising again from the dead, He was clearly manifested to be all that He claimed to be, — the Son of God and the Saviour of the world.
3. There is another interpretation of the passage which is essen- tially the same as that given by many of the fathers, and is thus presented by Dr. Addison Alexander in his commentary on Acts xiii. 33, " The expression in the Psalm, ' I have begotten thee,' means, I am He who has begotten thee, i. e., I am thy father. ' To-day ' refers to the date of the decree itself (Jehovah said. To- day, etc.) ; but this, as a divine act, was eternal, and so must be the Sonship which it affirms."
Acts xiii. 32, 33. It may be urged, however, that in Acts xiii. 32, 33, this passage is quoted in the proof of the resurrection of Christ, which shows that the Apostle understood the passage to teach that Christ was begotten or made the Son of God when He rose from the dead. The passage in Acts reads thus in our version : " We declare unto you glad tidings, how that the promise which was made unto the fathers, God hath fulfilled the same unto us their children, in that He hath raised up Jesus again (dmo-Tiyo-as) ; as it is also written in the second psalm. Thou art my Son, this day have I. begotten thee." Hei'e there is no reference to the resurrection. The glad tidings which the Apostle announced was not the resurrection, but the advent of the Messiah. That was the promise made to the fathers, which God had fulfilled by raising up, i. e., bringing into the World the promised deliverer. Compare Acts ii. 30 ; iii. 22, 26 ; vii. 37, in all which passages where the same word is used, the " raising up " refers to the advent of Christ ; as when it is said, " A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren, like unto me." The Word is never used absolutelj^ in reference to the resurrection unless, as in Acts ii. 32, where the resurrection is spoken of in the context. Our translators have obscured the meaning by rendering avao-T7;cras " having raised up again,'^ instead of simply " having raised up," as they render it elsewhere.
476 PART I. — THEOLOGY. [Ch. VI. — The Trinity.
That this is the true meaning of the passage is clear from the succeeding verses. Paul having said that God had fulfilled hi& promise to the fathers by raising up Christ, agreeably to Psalm ii. 7, immediately adds as an additional fact, " And as coiicerning that He raised Him up from the dead, now no more to return to cor ruption. He said on this wise, I will give you the sure mercies of David. Wherefore he saith also in another psalm, Thou shalt not suffer thine Holy One to see corruption." (Acts xiii. 34, 35.) The Apostle, therefore, does not teach that Christ was made the Son of God by his resurrection. But even, as just remarked, if He did teach that the Theanthropos was in one sense made the Son of God, that would not prove that the Logos was not Son in another and higher sense.
Luke i. 35. The same remark is applicable to Luke i. 35 : " The Holy Ghost shall come upon tkee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee ; therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee, shall be called the Son of God." Bishop Pearson, one of the most strenuous defenders of " eternal generation," and of all the peculiarities of the Nicene doctrine of the Trinity, gives four reasons why the Theanthropos or Godman is called the Son of God. (1.) His miraculous conception. (2.) The high office to which he was designated. (John x. 34, 35, 36.) (3.) His resurrection, according to one interpretation of Acts xiii. 33. " The grave," he says, " is as the womb of the earth ; Christ, who is raised from thence, is as it were begotten to another life, and God, who raised him, is his Father." ^ (4.) Because after his resurrection He was made the heir of all things. (Heb. i. 2-5.) Having assigned these reasons why the Godman is called Son, he goes on to show why the Logos is called Son. There is nothing, therefore, in the passages cited inconsistent with the Church doc- trine of the eternal Sonship of our Lord. The language of the angel addressed to the Virgin Mary, may, however, mean no more than this, namely, that the assumption of humanity by the eternal Son of God was th» reason why He should be recognized as a divine person. It was no ordinary child who was to be born of Mary, but one who was, in the language of the prophets, to be the Wonder- ful, the Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Son of the Highest. It was because the Eternal Son was made of a woman, that that Holy Tiling born of the virgin was to be called the Son of God.
1 Pearson on Creed, p. 106.