Eternal Son of God3
The eternal existence of the second person raises a question regarding the relationship he had within the Godhead. As the second person of the Trinity (or “the Word,” as John 1:1 speaks of him), he existed from eternity past. But did he always in eternity past exist as
Son? Two major views have arisen: eternal sonship and incarnational sonship.
Hebrews 1:5, at first glance, appears to speak of the Father’s begetting the Son as an event that takes place at a point in time: “You are my Son,
today I have begotten you” and “I
will be to him a father, and he
shall be to me a son.” That verse presents some very difficult concepts.
Begetting normally speaks of a person’s origin. p 238 Moreover, sons are generally subordinate to their fathers. Therefore, the text appears to speak of something incompatible with an eternal Father-Son relationship, which demands that perfect equality and eternality must exist among the persons of the Trinity. The incarnational sonship line of reasoning concludes that
sonship indicates the place of voluntary submission to which Christ condescended at his incarnation (see John 5:18; Phil. 2:5–8).
The eternal sonship view rests on the observation that the title
Son of God, when applied to Christ in Scripture, seems to always speak of his essential deity and absolute equality with God, not his voluntary subordination. The Jewish leaders of Jesus’s time understood this. John 5:18 says that they sought the death penalty against Jesus, charging him with blasphemy “because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.” In that culture, a dignitary’s adult son was deemed equal in stature and privilege with his father. The same deference demanded by a king was afforded to his adult son. The son was, after all, of the very same essence as his father, heir to all the father’s rights and privileges—and therefore equal in every significant regard. So when Jesus was called “Son of God,” it was understood categorically by all as a title of deity, declaring him equal with God and (more significantly) of the same essence as the Father. That is precisely why the Jewish leaders regarded the title
Son of God the ultimate high blasphemy.
If Jesus’s sonship signifies his deity and absolute equality with the Father, it cannot be a title that pertains only to his incarnation. In fact, the main gist of what is meant by sonship (and certainly this would include Jesus’s divine essence) must pertain to the eternal attributes of Christ, not merely the humanity he assumed.
The begetting spoken of in Psalm 2 and Hebrews 1 is not an event that takes place in time. Even though, at first glance, Scripture seems to employ terminology with temporal overtones (“today I have begotten you”), the context of Psalm 2:7 surely refers to the eternal “decree” of God. It is reasonable to conclude that the begetting Psalm 2 speaks of is also something that pertains to eternity rather than to a point in time. The temporal language should therefore be understood as figurative, not literal.
Orthodox theologians since the First Council of Constantinople (381) have recognized this, and when dealing with the sonship of Christ, they employ the term
eternal generation—which is an admittedly difficult expression. In Spurgeon’s words, it is “a term that does not convey to us any great meaning; it simply covers up our ignorance.”4 Yet the concept itself is biblical. Scripture refers to Christ as “the only Son from the Father” (John 1:14; see 1:18; 3:16, 18). The Greek word translated “the only Son” (ESV; “only begotten,” KJV, NASB) is
monogenēs. The thrust of its meaning has to do with Christ’s utter uniqueness. Literally, it may be rendered “one of a kind”—and yet it also clearly signifies that he is of the very same essence as the Father. Therefore, while
monogenēs does not explicitly imply generation, it nevertheless p 239 coheres with the biblical concept (cf. Ps. 2:7; John 5:26), for it is precisely his eternal generation that makes Christ the unique Son of the Father.
To say that Christ is “begotten” is itself a difficult concept. Within the realm of creation, the term
begotten speaks of the origin of one’s offspring. The begetting of a son denotes his conception—the point at which he comes into being. Some thus assume that “only begotten” refers to the conception of the human Jesus in the womb of the Virgin Mary. Yet Matthew 1:20 attributes the conception of the incarnate Christ to the Holy Spirit, not to God the Father. The begetting referred to in Psalm 2:7 and John 1:14 clearly refers to something more than the conception of Christ’s humanity in Mary’s womb.
Indeed, there is another, more vital, significance to the idea of
begetting than merely the origin of one’s offspring. In the design of God, each creature begets offspring “according to its kind” (Gen. 1:11–12, 21–25). The offspring bear the exact likeness of the parent. The fact that a son is generated by the father guarantees that the son shares the same nature as the father. Christ in his deity, however, is not a created being (John 1:1–3). He had no beginning but is as timeless as God himself. Therefore, the “begetting” mentioned in Psalm 2 and its cross-references has nothing to do with the origin of either his deity or his humanity. But it has everything to do with him sharing the same essence as the Father. Expressions like “eternal generation,” “only begotten Son,” and others pertaining to the filiation of Christ must all be understood as underscoring the absolute oneness of essence between Father and Son. In other words, such expressions aren’t intended to evoke the idea of procreation; they are meant to convey the truth about the essential oneness shared by the members of the Trinity.
An incarnational view of Christ’s sonship assumes that Scripture employs father-son terminology anthropomorphically—accommodating unfathomable heavenly truths to our finite minds by casting them in human terms. But human father-son relationships are merely earthly pictures of an infinitely greater heavenly reality. In the eternal sonship view, the one true, archetypal father-son relationship exists eternally within the Trinity. All others are simply earthly replicas, imperfect because they are bound up in mankind’s finiteness yet illustrating a vital eternal reality.
If Christ’s sonship is all about his deity, someone will wonder why this sonship applies only to the second person of the Godhead and not to the third. After all, theologians do not refer to the Holy Spirit as God’s Son. Yet the Spirit is also of the same essence as the Father. The full, undiluted, undivided essence of God belongs alike to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God is but one essence, yet he exists in three persons. The three persons are coequal, but they are still distinct persons. The chief characteristics that distinguish the persons are wrapped up in the properties suggested by the names Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Theologians have labeled these properties paternity, filiation, and spiration. That such distinctions are vital to our understanding of the Trinity is clear from Scripture. How to explain them fully remains something of a mystery. In fact, many aspects of these truths may remain forever inscrutable, p 240 but this basic understanding of the eternal relationships within the Trinity nonetheless represents the best consensus of Christian understanding over the centuries of church history. The doctrines of Christ’s eternal sonship and eternal generation ought therefore to be affirmed, even while acknowledging them as mysteries into which we cannot expect to pry too deeply.5
In calling Jesus His beloved Son, the Father declared not only a relationship of divine nature but a relationship of divine love. They had a relationship of mutual love, commitment, and identification in every way.
In saying, “with whom I am well-pleased,” the Father declared His approval with everything the Son was, said, and did. Everything about Jesus was in perfect accord with the Father’s will and plan.8[1]
Biblical Doctrine: A Systematic Summary of Bible Truth (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2017), 236–240.
