And just to return to where I started. Let us all reflect for a moment on the dramatic significance of Grudem’s claim about eternal generation. What he is saying is that the church catholic has for over 1600 years been affirming theologically and liturgically, as the key ecumenical summary of its faith, a document – the Nicene Creed – which in one of its core and defining assertions is superfluous or virtually meaningless or confused (or a wax nose which means whatever any Christian chooses).
http://www.alliancenet.org/mos/postcards-from-palookaville/once-more-unto-the-breach-and-then-no-more-a-final-reply-to-dr-grude#.V2wzzShW402
Keep in mind that I don't subscribe to the eternal subordination of the Son. That said, Trueman is using exactly, and I do mean exactly–the same objection that Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox apologists use in reference to the Protestant faith, viz.
"Consider for a moment the dramatic significance of your claims. What you are saying is that for 1600 years, God allowed the Church to go astray until Luther and Calvin popped in out of the blue!"
How can Trueman be so blind?
Oops
ReplyDeleteWell yes and no. I am sure you know the reformers were trying to go back to the early church and the Catholics claimed they were the church. The reformers said, no, they used Scripture and you (Catholics) didn't.
ReplyDeleteTrue, but I was pointing out how Trueman's objection unwittingly mirrors the Catholic objection to Protestantism.
DeleteMany scholars claim that the position that Grudem (and those others he quoted) was the position (Father as Father and Son as Son from all eternity) (not in the same words that they are using; before Calvin's auto-Theos of the Son and the Holy Spirit. the Son eternally derives His Homo-ousias from the Father, and the Spirit's is the eternal procession from the Father. On can hold to that as an eternal thing and still hold the full Deity of each person; and eternality. There seems to be a development from "same-substance" (nicea) to "one substance (Augustine) to "auto-theos" of Calvin. From what I understand, B. B. Warfield wrote on this; and I read it a while back, but don't have the exact reference right now.
ReplyDeleteIt seems that Carl Truemen forgot about the development from "homo-ousias" of Nicea to "one- ousia" of Augustine, to "auto-theos" of Calvin's view.
ReplyDeleteDoesn't "auto-theos" of the Son and Spirit contradict John 5:26 ? (and without understanding John 5:26 in an Arian way)
https://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/sdg/warfield/warfield_calvintrinity.html
Denial of eternal generation/the autotheos of the Son only contradicts Jn 5:26 on the assumption that the "life" in that verse refers to the divine life of God. God's nature. God's subsistence.
ReplyDeleteBut in context, this has reference to eternal life. A communicable attribute. Life that Jesus shares with Christians.
Even Christians can have "life in themselves". Cf. Jn 6:53. Jesus confers eternal life because he has it to give.
DeleteThe Father giving to the Son as to have life in Himself, in John 5:26 seems to point to the source being the Father, but it is not a temporal giving - as if the Son didn't have it and then the Father gave it; but that the Father is the cause and source of the Son's life - as in an eternal generation of life and light flowing out from Him.
ReplyDeleteJohn 6:53 - our life is only because Christ gives His life to us. Seems to be a different thing there.
When witnessing to Muslims and others like JWs who deny the Trinity; we speak of the Father and the Son as One (one substance, essence) - "I and the Father are one" - John 10:30. Sometimes they respond with John 17:21 - "that they may be one, even as You Father are in Me and I in You . . .
There has to be some way to distinguish the eternal oneness of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit vs. the oneness that believers get as a result of relationship with the Lord. "even as" has to be explained.
So, I don't thing John 6:53 is the same thing as what John 5:26 says is going on with the Father and the Son. John 5:26 seems to point to the Aseity of the Father and the Son.
"The Father giving to the Son as to have life in Himself, in John 5:26 seems to point to the source being the Father, but it is not a temporal giving - as if the Son didn't have it and then the Father gave it; but that the Father is the cause and source of the Son's life - as in an eternal generation of life and light flowing out from Him."
DeleteKen, as I already pointed out, that's acontextual. Throughout John's Gospel and 1 John, "life" is shorthand for the gift of eternal life, which is John's synonym for salvation.
Therefore, it doesn't refer to God's essence or existence, but spiritual life that God conveys to Christians via the Holy Spirit.
The "life" that the Father gives to the Son is the same life that the Son, in turn, gives to his followers. "In him was life" (1:4). That's a regular motif in John's Gospel and 1 John. To treat "life" in this one verse as something entirely different from what "life" means everywhere else in John's Gospel and 1 John is arbitrary.
You're missing the point of my comparison with Jn 6:53. It uses the same construction: "life in oneself."
Yet that's actually consistent with receiving life. Once they receive it, they then have life "in themselves".
So you're making too much of the Father has "life in himself".
In context, that's not referring to the "being" of God, but to the Father commissioning the Son. The Father authorizes the Son to confer eternal life on his followers.
"John 5:26 seems to point to the Aseity of the Father and the Son."
Wrong. It's equivalent to what he said just a view verses before:
"For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will" (Jn 5:21).
Parallel concepts. Different ways of saying the same thing.
You're treating Jn 5:26 is isolation from Johannine usage generally.
i) When prooftexting the deity of Christ, Jn 10:30 isn't the first verse I'd reach for. Mind you, I think it proves the point.
DeleteI wouldn't say it directly teaches that the Father and Son are consubstantial. Rather, I'd say it's an allusion to the Shema. Jesus is including himself in the Shema.
ii) Jn 17:21 involves analogy, not identity: A is to B as C is to D.
A comparison between two paired things. The Father and the Son, on the one hand; fellow believers, on the other hand.
Comparing two paired things doesn't make one pair identical to another pair. For instance: sharks are to leopards as seals are to antelopes.
Here we're comparing marine predators and marine prey to terrestrial predators and terrestrial prey. There's a parallel, but they are different. In one respect, a marine species is different kinds of creature than a land animal, yet they can exemplify the same functions (predator/prey relations).