"Begotten, not made"

The core of Clarke's subordinationism is as follows. Certain names or titles in the Bible, including “God”, always or nearly always refer to the Father, giving him a kind of primacy among the three. The word “God” is used in higher and lower senses, and in his view the former always refers to the Father. The God of Israel, the one true God, just is the Father of Jesus. Further, he is the main and the primary and ultimate object of Christian worship and prayer, and as the sole recipient of the highest kind of worship. In his view, the Son of God has all the divine attributes but one, that of existing a se that is, existing and not being in any sense derivative of or dependent on anything else. To the contrary, “The Father Alone is Self-existent, Underived, Unoriginated, Independent” (Clarke 1738, 123). It is contradictory to suppose that something has this property in any sense because of another thing. In his view the Son and the Holy Spirit (like the Son, a personal agent or self distinct from the Father) exist and have their perfections because of the Father. Both are functionally and ontologically subordinate to him, and in the Spirit is at least functionally subordinate to the Son. What sort of dependence relations are these? The Son and Spirit derive their being from the Father as from a “Supreme Cause”, but we are not to infer from this that the Father existed before them. The Bible doesn't enlighten us on the nature of this dependence relationship, but seems to presuppose that it always was (i.e., that infinitely back in time, the Son and Spirit existed in dependence on the Father). Thus, “Arian” subordinationists (see section 3.1 above) are speculating groundlessly when they say there was a time when the Son didn't exist. And if a “creature” must at some time begin to exist, then neither Son nor Spirit are creatures. Still, Clarke thinks that we should affirm with some of the early church fathers that this derivation of the Son from the Father is “not by mere Necessity of Nature, (which would be in reality Self-existence, not Filiation;) But by an Act of the Father's incomprehensible Power and Will” (141, original emphases). Clarke argues that the New Testament teaches the eternal existence of the Son, and that he is (co-) creator of the world. Further, it teaches that the Holy Spirit is a personal agent distinct from God (and not a power of God, or an exercise of such). And against the mainstream tradition, “The word God, in Scripture, never signifies a complex Notion of more Persons (or Intelligent Agents) than One; but always means One Person only, viz., either the Person of the Father singly, or the Person of the Son singly” (155, original emphases). While the Spirit is nowhere called “God” or held up for worship, Clarke holds that his divinity is implied, and thus so is the appropriateness of his being worshiped as the Son is worshiped. The early Fathers, he holds, thought Father and Son to be homoousios only in the sense that the latter is ineffably derived from the former—not in the sense of their being the same thing or the exact same kind of thing.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/trinity/unitarianism.html#17t18tCenEngSub

i) Assuming the accuracy of this summary, what’s striking is the degree to which Clarke is using Nicene subordination as his frame of reference. The degree to which he shares certain fundamental assumptions in common with Nicene orthodoxy, but develops them in a “semi-Arian” direction.

From what I can tell, both he and Nicene subordinationists regard the Father as the ontological source of the Son and the Spirit. They share that fundamental underlying presupposition.

Where they differ is how they construe the implications of that presupposition. At best, Clarke is a “homoian Arian.” Father, Son, and Spirit are of “like” substance rather than the same substance (or consubstantial).

The upshot is that Nicene subordination plays into variations of unitarianism. For that reason, Calvin was right to question this framework. Some subsequent Reformed thinkers, to forge a more consistent overall position, have since developed his approach. The only way to avoid the unitarian potential of so-called Nicene orthodoxy is to scrap the fundamental presupposition of the Father’s monarchy.

In that respect, I think contemporary Calvinists should follow the lead of Frame, Warfield, and Helm rather than Roger Beckwith, Sam Waldron, and Douglas Kelly–for the latter represents a throwback to a flawed paradigm that’s vulnerable to unitarianism.

ii) Nicene subordination represents an unstable compromise. Take the distinction between making and begetting.

“Begetting” is a biological metaphor. So we need to isolate and identify the intended scope of the figurative analogy. At what level does the comparison operate?

To my knowledge, Nicene subordination takes the position that the Son and Spirit derive their existence and essence from the Father. But if that’s the case, then that seems like a pretty good definition of what it means to make something. What does it mean to say something is made if not to say it owes its existence and/or essence to something else? If anything, that’s a stronger definition of making something than is necessary. In common parlance, to make something doesn’t mean it has to derive its entire existence or essence from whoever or whatever made it. The maker may employ preexisting parts or materials.

So if something can be an artifact in even that weaker sense, then surely it’s an artifact in the stronger sense, when its entire substance and subsistence derives from another.

Hence, I don’t see a principled contrast between begetting and making in Nicene subordination. Once we strip away the incidental, figurative connotations of begetting, the residual concept seems to collapse into something made. A product. A creature.

Of course, in its historical setting, the distinction is more specific, contrasting the Nicene position with the Arian position, where the distinction between begetting and making boils down to a special kind of production. Making by means of eternal generation is qualified in the sense that there was never a time when the Son did not exist, in contrast to the world. Likewise, making by means of eternal generation is qualified in the sense that the producer and the product share the same nature or essence, in contrast to creation ex nihilo.

So the Son isn’t made in the same sense that the world is made. The Son is coessential and coeternal with the Father. Still, if he owes his existence and essence to the Father, then there’s an unavoidable sense in which the Father made him. That seems to be true by definition, an analytical truth, given the causal dependence of the Son on the Father for his entire substance and subsistence. Within this framework, we might say the Son is an eternal creature or eternal artifact of the Father. We might say the Father communicates his essence to the Son (and Spirit). But the Son is still an artifact of the Father’s action. Father is the producer while the Son is the product.

One might try to deny that eternal generation is a causal concept. But if the Father is the source of the Son’s being, then a cause/effect relationship seems to be undeniable. It may not be temporal, but it surely is causal.

iii) This also has implications for worship. If we grant the monarchy of the Father, then isn’t the Father a greater being than the Son or Spirit? The inoriginate originator of the Son and the Spirit? And in that case, isn’t he entitled to greater adoration than the Spirit or the Son? Doesn’t everything trace back to the Father?

That’s assuming the monarchy of the Father is correct. Nicene subordination was a great improvement over Arianism. But it’s easy to improve on Nicene subordination. The time is past due to cut the apron strings. The church fathers did the best they could with the available resources, but we’re in a position to do better, for we’re much further down the line of historical, theological, and exegetical reflection. 

iv) To my knowledge, Origen was the first writer to introduce the theory of eternal generation into Christian theology:

If then I set before you, with respect to the Savior, that the Father has not begotten the Son and then severed him from his generation, but always begets him, I will also present something similar for the righteous man.

If then the Savior is always begotten–because of this he also says, Before all the hills he begets me, (and not, “Before all the hills he has begotten me,” but, Before all of the hills he begets me [Prov 8:25)–and the Savior is always begotten by the Father…

Homily 9.4-5, in J. Smith, ed. Origin. Homilies on Jeremiah.  Homily on 1 Kings 28 (CUA 1998), 92-93.

It would be highly ironic if the Christology of a formally condemned heretic like Origen becomes the touchstone of Christian orthodoxy. Moreover, this is founded on a dubious appeal to Prov 8.