In the past, it was somewhat easier for Arminians to attack Calvinists because universalism wasn't a live option. Now that "evangelical universalism" has made a comeback, the universalists are co-opting Arminian prooftexts. Moreover, universalists can accept these passages as they stand, without further qualification. So they have an advantage over Arminians.
Nicene subordinationists may find themselves in a similar quandary vis-a-vis unitarianism. That's because unitarianism is also making a comeback.
Let's begin with a succinct and lucid statement of eternal generation:
The role of a father is “to beget,” just as the meaning of sonship is “to be begotten.” The Father, therefore, is unbegotten, but is origin and progenitor of the Son, who himself does not beget, for there is no “Son” in the Godhead other than himself. That is to say, the whole reality of the Father is to beget, to generate, to give all that he has, namely, his whole divine nature, to the Son. And the whole reality of the Son is to be begotten, to be generated, to receive all that he has, namely, his whole divine nature, from the Father…The life of the Father is an eternal giving of himself whole and entire to the Son. The life of the Son is an eternal receiving of the Father whole and entire.
http://dhspriory.org/thomas/JohnApp.htm#III
That's a classic, Thomistic definition. Some theologians (e.g. Turretin) tweak it.
Notice the radical ontological asymmetry between the Father and the Son. The asymmetry could not be more radical. The Son is purely and totally the effect of the Father's action. The Son's subsistence is completely contingent, completely derivative. The Son is like a shadow or echo of the Father.
The Son exists only because the Father wills the Son to exist. If the Father momentarily ceased to will the Son's existence, the Son would instantly cease to exist. (Of course, Aquinas would hasten to add that the Father necessarily wills the Son's existence.)
It's like Berkelean idealism, where the world is a divine projection. God is like a lucid dreamer in whose imagination the world subsists.
It reminds me of 2009 reboot of The Prisoner. In the reboot, the "Village" is a dream world. The Village exists in the mind of Helen. Most of the characters in the Village have real-world counterparts. Helen has a sedated, real-world counterpart.
However, Helen and her husband have a son who was "born" in the Village. He can never leave The Village, because he has no real-world counterpart. If Helen ever awakens in the real world, their son will cease to be.
Now I'm going to comment on a defense of eternal generation:
i) Not surprisingly, Lee handles the exegetical side of the argument pretty well. I'm sympathetic to his defense of "only-begotten" as the correct rendering of monogenes. However, that stops well short of his desired destination.
ii) For one thing, John uses several related designations for Christ: the Son, the "only-begotten" Son, the Son of God. Why assume that "only-begotten Son" is intended to emphasize generation, rather than viewing this as a synonymous variant in Johannine usage?
iii) And at the end of the day, we're still dealing with a theological metaphor. Father and Son are theological metaphors. So what's the intended scope of the metaphor? Is it derivation of essence? What about community of essence? Like Father, like Son.
First, it should be obvious that we are using an analogy from human experience to describe something about the eternal, immutable God. Clearly, then, the manner in which a human father begets a son differs significantly from the manner in which the Father begets the Son. For one thing, in human begetting, there is a time when the son does not exist; but in the divine original of which the human begetting is but a pale reflection, there never was a time when the Son did not exist (pace Arius).
Yes, there's a difference, but if you think about it, that's more a difference of degree than a difference in kind. For instance, there was never a time before God willed the creation of the world. Just as the Father always willed the generation of the Son, God always willed the creation of the world. So appealing to divine timelessness has limited value in differentiating a creature from the eternal generation of the Son, on this scheme.
And a human father's begetting is a free and voluntary act, while the Son's filiation is an eternal and necessary act. Otherwise, the Son would be a contingent being, but no contingent being is divine.
But on this paradigm the Son is a contingent being. His existence is contingent on the Father's will. It hangs by the thread of the Father's will.
Also, what's the prooftext for the necessity of the Father willing the Son?
Calvin attempted to resolve the problem by claiming - as we have seen - that the eternal generation of the Son only implies a communication of the personal property of Sonship, not a communication of divine essence. If the latter were the case, then, Calvin assumed, the deity of Christ would be a derived deity and hence no true deity at all…Turretin agreed with Calvin that the true deity of Christ necessarily dictates that the Son be autotheos. Yet Turretin also taught that the eternal generation of the Son involved a communication of essence. Thus, Calvin's solution was not open to him. So Turretin resolved the problem by asserting that aseity is properly attributed to the Son's divine essence not to his person.
i) What's the Biblical warrant for these proposed distinctions?
ii) Shouldn't we consider the possibility that Nicene subordination creates an artificial problem? Instead of laboring to solve that problem within the confines of the Nicene framework, why not question the framework itself?
iii) Apropos (ii), we'd be on further ground if we said the Trinity is a se. Aseity is a property of the Trinity, rather than the Father, or the three persons individually.
Second, such language is unavoidable in any sound doctrine of the Trinity. For we do not maintain that there are three divine beings, but one God in three persons. Were we to argue that the three persons of the Godhead each had aseity in the sense that each had its own divine essence independently of the other two, would we not be committed to tritheism? If so, then we cannot escape the notion that these three hypostases must be related to one another in a way that involves dependence or derivation. But then derivation is the opposite of aseity.
Lee's argument depends on using dependence and derivation as interchangeable concepts. But on the face of it, these are different concepts. A triangle depends on having three sides. But that's not a derivative relationship, that I can see.
May I remind you that this odd language is strikingly similar to the teaching of Jesus himself, "Just as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son to have life in himself" (John 5:26).
Does "life" in that verse refer to the inner life of the Godhead? In context, isn't that kind of life a communicable attribute? God grants eternal life to Christians?
Eternal generation, far from detracting from the Son's ontological equality with the Father, actually provides its most profound logical ground.
Except that eternal generation clearly does detract from the Son's ontological equality with the Father. That ontological inequality is built into the radical asymmetry of the relation.
As I've often argued, it would be better to scrap the Nicene subordinationist paradigm rather than tweaking it. I appreciate the way Frame, Warfield, and Helm have redirected the issue.
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