SON OF GOD. - This term, in current usage, can designate every creature insofar as it is produced by God and watched over by his providence; or the rational creature insofar as, through Grace, it is destined to enjoy God in the beatific vision (= adoptive son); or finally the natural Son of God, he who proceeds from God the Father by way of generation, from whom he is therefore really distinct, while yet having in common the same divine nature. It is in this sense that the term is to be taken when one speaks of the Son of God as the second person of the Most Holy Trinity. Thus it was defined at the Council of Nicaea (325) against the heresy of Arius, who maintained that the Word, that is, the Son of God, was the first and most exalted creature of God (v. CONSUBSTANTIAL).
The doctrine of the Church, already hinted at in the Old Testament, appears with full clarity in the books of the New Testament, where the Son of God reveals himself to us in the person of Jesus Christ. For he is qualified as the Son of God properly so called (Rom. 8:32), only-begotten (Mt. 3:17; 17:5), unique (Io. 1:14, 18; 3:16), firstborn (Col. 1:15), true (I Io. 5:20); appellations that absolutely exclude any sonship other than the natural one.
Jesus Christ himself always speaks of God as his Father and as the Father of men, but he gives us to understand that he is his Father in a wholly particular and exclusive way, for he always distinguishes the divine fatherhood in regard to himself from that in regard to men (my Father, your Father: cf. Lc. 22:29; Mt. 10:33; 6:32; Io. 20:17). If our relations with God are those of adoptive sons, those of Christ are, instead, those of a natural son; which, moreover, is evident from those testimonies in which Christ affirms himself equal to the Father in power, in will, in nature (Io. 5:17-27; 16:15; 10:30). Thus his hearers interpreted the thought of Christ, friends such as Peter (Mt. 16:16), or enemies such as the members of the Sanhedrin (Mt. 26:63 ff.).
If Christ is the natural son of God, we must admit within the Godhead an act of generation, by which the divine life circulates from God the Father who generates to God the Son who is generated: a generation eternal and necessary, as everything in God is eternal and necessary; of a spiritual order, because God is most pure spirit; resolving itself in a simple origin of the Son from the Father, which involves no productive action, because the Son is uncreated, unproduced. But for generation to occur, the origin must be founded on an operation which by its nature requires that the one proceeding be of the same living substance as the principle from which he proceeds. It has been investigated what this operation is, and the answer has been given unanimously, identifying it with the intellectual knowledge of God. Sacred Scripture itself, presenting the Son of God as the Word (prologue of the Gospel of John), as the living image and splendor of the Father (Col. 1:15-19; Hebr. 1:3), leads one to think that he proceeds by way of intellection. But theological investigation, going further, affirms that the Son of God is a son because he is the Word, because he proceeds by reason of intellectual knowledge. In fact, in any intellection, even a created one, the word is by its nature like the object known, of which it is the faithful representation. In God, moreover, in whom knowledge has as its object the divine nature, the Word is necessarily like the divine nature; and since in God there can be nothing accidental, such likeness is necessarily substantial. Therefore the Word proceeds as living God from living God, drawing his consubstantiality with the principle, from which he has his origin, precisely from the fact that he proceeds as Word, that is, by way of intellection. Therefore the Word is the Son of God, and is the Son of God because he is the Word.
But every attempt of reason to sound the secret of the intimate life of God must at a certain point halt in humble adoration before the depths of the mystery, whose direct knowledge is reserved to the beatific vision (v. PARADISE).
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Antonio Gaboardi