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to the original Sonship of Christ. It was only because He was the essential and eternal Son of
God, that He could be called the Son of God as Messiah. Moreover, the Messiah-Sonship
reflects the eternal Sonship of Christ. It is from the point of view of this Messiah-Sonship that
God is even called the God of the Son, II Cor. 11:31; Eph. 1:3, and is sometimes mentioned as
God in distinction from the Lord, John 17:3; I Cor. 8:6; Eph. 4:5,6. —— (3) In a nativistic sense.
The name “Son of God” is given to Jesus also in view of the fact that He owed His birth to the
paternity of God. He was begotten, according to His human nature, by the supernatural
operation of the Holy Spirit, and is in that sense the Son of God. This is clearly indicated in Luke
1:32,35, and may probably be inferred also from John 1:13.
b. The personal subsistence of the Son.
The personal subsistence of the Son must be
maintained over against all Modalists, who in one way or another deny the personal
distinctions in the Godhead. The personality of the Son may be substantiated as follows: (1) The
way in which the Bible speaks of the Father and the Son alongside of each other implies that
the one is just as personal as the other, and is also indicative of a personal relationship existing
between the two. (2) The use of the appelatives “only-begotten” and “firstborn” imply that the
relation between the Father and the Son, while unique, can nevertheless be represented
approximately as one of generation and birth. The name “firstborn” is found in Col. 1:15; Heb.
1:6, and emphasizes the fact of the eternal generation of the Son. It simply means that He was
before all creation. (3) The distinctive use of the term “Logos” in Scripture points in the same
direction. This term is applied to the Son, not in the first place to express His relation to the
world (which is quite secondary), but to indicate the intimate relation in which He stands to the
Father, the relation like that of a word to the speaker. In distinction from philosophy, the Bible
represents the Logos as personal and identifies Him with the Son of God, John 1:1-14; I John
1:1-3. (4) The description of the Son as the image, or even as the very image of God in II Cor.
4:4; Col. 1:15; Heb. 1:3. God clearly stands out in Scripture as a personal Being. If the Son of
God is the very image of God, He too must be a person.
c. The eternal generation of the Son.
The personal property of the Son is that He is eternally
begotten of the Father (briefly called “filiation”), and shares with the Father in the spiration of
the Spirit. The doctrine of the generation of the Son is suggested by the Biblical representation
of the first and second persons of the Trinity as standing in the relation of Father and Son to
each other. Not only do the names “Father” and “Son” suggest the generation of the latter by
the former, but the Son is also repeatedly called “the only-begotten,” John 1:14,18; 3:16,18;
Heb. 11:17; I John 4:9. Several particulars deserve emphasis in connection with the generation
of the Son: (1) It is a necessary act of God. Origen, one of the very first to speak of the
generation of the Son, regarded it as an act dependent on the Father’s will and therefore free.
Others at various times expressed the same opinion. But it was clearly seen by Athanasius and