God in Three Persons - Part 4
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The Meaning of the Eternal Generation of the Son
The Meaning of the Eternal Generation of the Son
14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
Who is the Word?
What does it mean to become flesh?
9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.
18 No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.
This affirms the full deity of Christ! Because so many other passages affirm the full deity of Christ, and because God has existed eternally, we must stay away from any idea that the Son was somehow created by the Father in the distant past in the train of thought we would use with a human father & son.
On the other hand, the examples in the previous section show that compound words using -genēs tend to carry an implication of some kind of origin. And there are other verses that speak of the Son as existing in some sense “from” the Father.
3 He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,
The word radiance gives the sense of bright light shining from a source of light, and exact imprint is a word elsewhere used for an exact duplicate of an original pattern (such as a coin stamped out at a mint). Both words indicate that the Son, while not created, is in some sense “from” the Father.
But, if we look at John 1:1-2, the Word is something spoken outward from a person. It is not the person. Furthermore, John quotes Jesus as saying:
26 For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself.
What, then, does the eternal generation of the Son mean? It means that the Son is in some sense “from” the Father. But beyond that, it is easier to define what it does not mean than to clearly explain what it does mean. Eternal generation is not something that ever began, but it is eternal. It does not mean that the Son was created by the Father. And it does not mean that the Father possesses any of the attributes of God in a greater measure than the Son.
Speaking positively, we can say that the eternal generation of the Son implies that
(1) the Son is of the same nature as the Father (for a father begets a son like himself),
(2) the Son is a distinct person from the Father (for the Son is begotten and the Father is unbegotten), and
(3) there is a specific order in the relationship between Father and Son (the biblical pattern is always from the Father through the Son.
But all three of these points can be established from the clear testimony of many passages of Scripture without any need for a doctrine of eternal generation. Still, the idea of the eternal generation of the Son implies all three of these points at once, while otherwise they would have to be established by a combination of the teachings of several different verses.
Can we explain anything more about what happens in this eternal generation? What kind of generation is this? There have been at least two common explanations that do not clearly contradict any text of Scripture or any essential element in the doctrine of the Trinity:
A. Eternal generation means that the Father eternally communicates to the Son the divine essence, so that the Son fully shares in every attribute of the Father. John 5:26 can be understood to support this idea: “For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself.” This does not mean that the Father is greater than the Son in any attribute, for the Father’s communication of the divine essence is so complete that the Son is the “exact imprint” (or exact duplicate) of the Father.
In Hebrews 1:3, we find He (Jesus) is the exact imprint of His (The Fathers) nature. They are duplicates of nature, with separate duties.
3 He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,
And because this generation is eternal, the Son was not created but eternally existed as “the only begotten Son.” This has been the most common view through the history of the church.
B. Eternal generation means that the Father is the source of the personal distinctions between Father and Son (and, by implication, the Holy Spirit), but he is not the source of their divine essence (or being). This was the view of John Calvin, who was concerned that the first option (saying that the Father communicates the divine essence to the Son) seems to imply that the Son and Spirit are lesser deities, that they somehow do not fully have all the attributes of the Father.
I find it difficult to decide between these two options, but option (a) seems to be a more natural conclusion from the meaning of “only begotten”, from the very names Father and Son, and from the verses that speak of the Son as the Word of God, “the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature”, and the one whom the Father has granted to “have life in himself”.
Can we confirm that God has revealed enough information in Scripture for us to affirm or deny either option (a) or (b) with confidence?
The actual meaning of the eternal generation of the Son might in fact be option (c), an explanation that we do not now understand or even know about. What we do have is five verses that say that Christ is the “only begotten” Son of the Father, and we have other verses that teach that God is eternal. Therefore, we can affirm with confidence the eternal generation of the Son. But we are dealing here with a topic of great mystery, and it seems wise to admit that much of this topic remains among the “secret things” that “belong to the Lord our God” (Deut. 29:29).
Different Functions/Roles of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - Appropriate to Their Distinct Identities
Different Functions/Roles of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - Appropriate to Their Distinct Identities
Was the persons of the Trinity taking different roles in relation to creation accidental or arbitrary?
Could God the Father have come instead of God the Son to die for our sins? Could the Holy Spirit have sent God the Father to die for our sins and then sent God the Son to apply redemption to us?
No, it does not seem that these things could have happened, for the role of initiating, directing, and sending is appropriate to the position of the Father, who is first in the regular ordering of persons in the Trinity (from the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit) and the one after whom all human fatherhood is patterned. And the role of responding to the Father’s initiatives, obeying his directions, going as the Father sends, and revealing God to us is appropriate to the role of the Son, who is also called the Word of God. These roles could not have been reversed or the Father would have ceased to be the Father and the Son would have ceased to be the Son. And by analogy from that relationship, we may conclude that the role of the Holy Spirit is similarly one that was appropriate to the relationship he had with the Father and the Son before the world was created.
These distinct personal identities are essential to the very nature of God himself, and they could not be otherwise.
Yet we must also reaffirm that there are no differences in deity, attributes, or essential nature between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Each person is fully God and has all the attributes of God. The distinctions between the members of the Trinity are in the ways they relate to each other and to the creation. In those relationships they carry out roles that are appropriate to each person.
Does the Son Eternally Submit to the Authority of the Father?
Does the Son Eternally Submit to the Authority of the Father?
Does the role and rank of the Trinity ever change?
There are several reasons to think that the pattern of the Son’s submission to the Father while on earth was a reflection of the fact that the Son has been subject to the authority of the Father before creation, and therefore eternally.
The eternal names Father and Son indicate differences in the relationship. In the biblical world, the father in a family had a leadership role, an authority, that a son did not have even as an adult, and the authors and original readers of Scripture would have naturally associated such a relationship with the names Father and Son.
The Father chose us in the Son “before the foundation of the world”, indicating an eternal action in which the Father is the person who initiates or leads in choosing who will be saved.
The Father “created the world” through the Son, for “all things were made through him”. This is not an eternal act, of course, but it does show that the Father’s primary role in the relationship existed long before the incarnation (that is, when the Son came to earth as a man;
The Father “gave his only Son” and “sent forth his Son” into the world, which means that before Christ took on a human nature he willingly obeyed the direction of the Father, who sent him into the world.
The doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son indicates that the Son is eternally “from” the Father, which indicates that the Father has always had some kind of priority in the relationship. More specifically, the Son’s submission to the Father’s authority is appropriate to and flows from the eternal generation of the Son by the Father.
This pattern in the Father-Son relationship continues through the time of Jesus’ earthly ministry and after he ascended into heaven.
While Jesus was on earth, he said, “I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me” and “I always do the things that are pleasing to him”.
Shortly before his crucifixion, Jesus said, “You heard me say to you, ‘I am going away, and I will come to you.’ If you loved me, you would have rejoiced, because I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I”.
Now that Jesus has ascended into heaven, he “is interceding for us”, which means he is bringing requests before the Father on our behalf.
After Christ’s ascension, he received authority from the Father to pour out the Holy Spirit on the church.
32 This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses.
33 Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing.
Jesus received revelation from the Father to give to John the predictions of the future in the book of Revelation: The book begins, “The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants the things that must soon take place”.
He now sits “at the right hand of the Majesty on high”, and being seated at the right hand is a position of secondary authority, subordinate to the king.
He has received from the Father the authority to execute final judgment.
After the final judgment, he will deliver the kingdom to God the Father, and then for all eternity “the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all”.
Grudem, W. (2020). Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine (Second Edition, pp. 303–304). Zondervan Academic.