There are two views on the Sonship of the Second Person of the Trinity:
1. “The
doctrine of Eternal Sonship … affirms that the second person of the triune
Godhead has eternally existed as the Son. In other words there was never a time
when He was not the Son of God, and there has always been a Father/Son
relationship within the Godhead.”[1]
2. The doctrine of “Incarnational Sonship, … teaches that while Christ preexisted He was not always the Son of God. Those that hold this view believe that Christ became the Son of God at some point in history, with the most common view being that Christ became the Son at His incarnation.”[2]
The Nicene Creed says the following:
“And in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the only-begotten Son of God,
begotten of His Father before all worlds,
God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God,
begotten, not made,
being of one substance with the Father,
by whom all things were made”[3]
The Nicene Creed says that Christ was begotten, or was Son, before creation. Is this ancient ecumenical creed correct on this point?
The Creed says that Christ is “Light of Light.” Compare this to Hebrews 1:3:
“The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being”[4]
Commenting on this verse, Randall Watters writes,
“For this reason, the Nicene Creed declares Christ: ‘God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God.’”[5]
Note that:
The Old Testament refers to God the Son before the incarnation.
Proverbs 30:4 reads,
“Who has ascended into heaven, or descended? Who has gathered the wind in His fists? Who has bound the waters in a garment? Who has established all the ends of the earth? What is His name, and what is His Son's name, If you know?”[7]
These are the words of Agur the son of Jakeh, who speaks in the present tense of the Son of God. The translators of the NKJV capitalize Son here, and John MacArthur applies this phrase verse to Jesus Christ.[8]
Daniel 3:25 reads,
“‘Look!’ he answered, ‘I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire; and they are not hurt, and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God.’”[9]
Again, the translators of the NKJV capitalize Son here, and the episode occurs in the present tense. In commenting on this verse, the 18th century English theologian John Gill writes, “His Sonship was known by Daniel, from whom it is probable Nebuchadnezzar had it.”
Finally, John Gill also sees the eternal Sonship of Christ in Proverbs 8:22 and 8:30:
“The Lord brought me forth as the first of his works, before his deeds of old; I was appointed from eternity, from the beginning, before the world began… Then I was the craftsman at his side. I was filled with delight day after day, rejoicing always in his presence”[10]
In the book In the Shadow of the Temple, Oskar Skarsaune shows…
“… that the theology of the Nicene Creed is a mirror of the way the Rabbis wrote about Wisdom and Torah. Simply put, the Rabbis took what Proverbs, Sirach, and the Wisdom of Solomon said about Wisdom's being God's firstborn, a participant in creation, and the ‘radiance’ of God's glory, and they applied it to the Torah. The apostles took the same material and applied it to Jesus. And the Nicene Fathers simply appropriated that very Jewish mode of thought from the New Testament.”[11]
In the New Testament, the Apostle John says that the Son of God was sent into the world:
“In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him.”[12]
J.N. Darby, the father of modern Dispensationalism, explains,
“If we say He were not the Son till the incarnation, then do I utterly lose the link of connection of His being sent from above, for then were it only after He was a Man in the world that He was sent about as a Man, but no, He was sent into the world”[13]
What then is the basis for Incarnational Sonship?
“One of the verses commonly used to support Incarnational Sonship is Hebrews 1:5, which appears to speak of God the Father’s begetting of God the Son as an event that takes place at a specific point in time: ‘Thou art My Son, Today I have begotten Thee. And again. I will be a Father to Him. And He shall be a Son to Me.’”[14]
In 1991, John MacArthur published an article entitled “The Sonship of Christ,” which explained and defended Incarnational Sonship. However, some years later, MacArthur reversed his position and publicly affirmed the doctrine of Eternal Sonship. He writes:
“It is now my conviction that 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 (‘this day have I begotten thee’), the context of Psalm 2:7 seems clearly to be a reference to the eternal decree of God. It is reasonable to conclude that the begetting spoken of there is also something that pertains to eternity rather than a point in time. The temporal language should therefore be understood as figurative, not literal.”[15]
The Father-Son
relationship in the Trinity is…
“… key to understanding the full measure of God’s love for those whom
He redeems through the blood of Christ. The fact that God the Father took His
Son, the very Son He loved from before the foundation of the world, and sent
Him to be a sacrifice for our sins is an amazing act of grace and love that is
best understood from the doctrine of eternal Sonship.”
“Taken to its logical conclusion, denying the eternal Sonship of Christ
reduces the Trinity from the relationship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to
simply Number One, Number Two and Number Three persons—with the numbers
themselves being an arbitrary designation, destroying the God-given order and
relationship that exists among the Persons of the Trinity.”[16]
John MacArthur
writes,
“My previous view was that Scripture employed Father-Son terminology
anthropomorphically—accommodating unfathomable heavenly truths to our finite
minds by casting them in human terms. Now I am inclined to think that the
opposite is true: Human father-son relationships are merely earthly pictures of
an infinitely greater heavenly reality. The one true, archetypical Father-Son
relationship exists eternally within the Trinity. All others are merely earthly
replicas, imperfect because they are bound up in our finiteness, yet
illustrating a vital eternal reality.”[17]
[3] #717, The Hymnal For Worship & Celebration, edited by Charles R. Swindoll
[4] NIV
[6] “When he is called the brightness of his glory and the impress of his substance, his divinity is referred to; the other things appertain in a measure to his human nature” (John Calvin, comments on Hebrews 1:3, http://www.ccel.org/ccel/calvin/calcom44.vii.ii.html)
[7] NKJV
[8] The MacArthur Study Bible, Proverbs 30:4: “His Son’s Name. Jesus Christ. Cf. John 1:1-18.”
[9] NKJV
[10] Proverbs 8:22, 23, 30, NIV
[12] 1 John 4:9, NKJV