I’m
discussing this issue for two reasons. It seems to me that
Scripturalism/Clarkianism has come to a crossroads. Will it take the unitarian
fork in the road?
I’m not an insider to the world of Clark’s would-be
disciples. Viewed from the outside, it appears to me that the
Clarkian/Scripturalist movement is increasingly fragmented and diminished. This
is, in large part, because it lacks any institutional patronage to unify it and
conserve it.
Issues raised by the unitarian turn in some
Clarkian/Scripturalist circles also concerns me from a missional standpoint.
This sends mixed signals to Muslims. It complicates the task of Christians who
evangelize Muslims.
Not that Clarkian/Scripturalist splinter groups have any
appreciable impact on outreach to Muslims. That’s a miniscule fringe group. But
it draws attention to fault-lines in Nicene subordination. So I’m using
it to illustrate larger issues.
I’m going to use D. A. Carson’s recent book Jesus the Son of
God to frame my discussion. I don’t always agree with him, but his book
supplies a useful backdrop even when he and I differ.
i) In chap. 1 he points out that “sonship” had broader
connotations in the ancient world than biological derivation. It had
sociological as well as biological connotations. As a rule, your father’s
social class determined your social class. If he was a king, you’d become the
next king. If he was a commoner, you’d be a commoner. If he was a blacksmith,
you’d be a blacksmith.
This stands in contrast to modern 1st world men
and women. Our culture has great social mobility, including upward (as well as
downward) mobility. So sonship tends to have a narrower connotation in our own
culture.
Therefore, when we come to NT passages about the sonship of
Christ, we need to guard against assuming a particular connotation, like
eternal generation.
ii) Carson also distinguishes between different connotations
of sonship in the OT, as well as how that carries over into the NT. The OT
sometimes speaks of Israel as God’s son. That’s a type of collective sonship.
It’s synonymous with God choosing Israel, but it uses an adoptive metaphor to
illustrate and enrich the concept of divine choice.
In some NT passages, Jesus is God’s “son” in this sense. He
assumes the role of the new and true Israel.
Then you have David sonship, with connotations of kingship
and anointed office. That theme is obviously picked up in the NT, where it
culminates in Jesus.
Both connotations of sonship also trigger further
associations with the eschatological notion of hereditary rights, viz. a royal
son as titular heir to his father’s throne.
Then, in the NT, there are passages where sonship connotes a
relationship which implies the deity of the Son, paralleling the deity of the
Father.
iii) Not only does Biblical sonship have various
connotations, but each connotation can have its own cluster of OT passages
which attest or develop that connotation. Indeed, these may constitute a chain
of passages threading through the OT, where a seminal motif is introduced in an
earlier book, and that, in turn, gives rise to a series of passages that begin
to unpack the implications of that idea. Different connotations of sonship have
their own literary allusions, running in tandem with each other. And sometimes
in the NT, these become interwoven. Parallel lines of development converge or
intersect. That’s not surprising, since these themes are fulfilled in one
person.
iv) In chap 2, argues for the functional subordination of
the Son to the Father. Up to a point I agree with Carson, but with some
important caveats:
a) We need to distinguish between the economic and the
immanent Trinity. To some extent the economic Trinity reveals the immanent
Trinity, but there are discontinuities as well as continuities. For instance,
things are true of God’s Incarnate Son which aren’t true and can’t be true of
God’s Son in isolation to the Incarnation. Jesus obviously has some
distinctively human characteristics. So you can’t simply read the economic
Trinity back into the immanent Trinity.
b) Moreover, even at the economic level, inequality
statements alternate with equality statements.
c) And that, in turn, suggests the direction in which we
should harmonize the respective types of claims. The Son can’t very well be
economically equal with the Father unless he is ontologically equal with the
Father. He can assume a role that’s less than he really is, but he can’t assume
a role that’s more than he really is. For no one can be more than he is. He
wouldn’t be up to the task assigned to him unless he was naturally suited to
the task. If he were genuinely inferior, he couldn’t discharge divine
prerogatives. His performance would inevitably be deficient.
Indeed, God sometimes delegates divine responsibilities to
human beings, and we see them fail. That’s a common theme in Scripture. God
does that to demonstrate our natural and moral inadequacies. But in the NT,
Jesus never falls short. His performance stands in stark and studied contrast
to merely human performance.
So there’s an asymmetry between equality statements and
inequality statements. An ontologically superior being can assume an
economically inferior role, but an ontologically inferior being can’t assume an
economically superior role.
v) In chap. 3, Carson reviews conventional prooftexts for
eternal generation, using Berkhof as his foil.
a) He notes that even Berkhof is ambivalent about Ps 2:7.
And he explains the irrelevance of Heb 11:17.
b) That leaves a handful of Johannine passages which talk
about the Son as monogenes. Berkhof renders that “only-begotten,” but Carson,
following most modern scholarship, renders it “one of a kind.”
c) I’m actually not convinced by that analysis. To begin
with, there’s a danger here of committing the etymological fallacy. Meaning is
determined by contemporary usage, not historical usage or the original root
word. Even if monogenes derives from genos rather than gennao, this doesn’t
mean that’s it was understood by John’s contemporaries.
In addition, Scripture often uses folk etymologies. John may
well be trading on verbal associations between generation and regeneration.
d) However, even if we retain the traditional rendering
(“only-begotten”), that doesn’t imply eternal generation. For one thing, we’re
still dealing with a metaphor. So we need to delimit and isolate the intended
scope of the figurative analogy. Is John emphasizing derivation, or something
else?
Is John’s point that the Son is derived from the Father, or
that the Son is divine, just like the Father? In controversial settings, where
Jesus is disputing with his opponents, as well as when they accuse him of
blasphemy, the stress is on the deity of Christ. Eternal generation isn’t very
meaningful in context. That’s not what the testy debates in the Johannine
narrative were about.
e) Likewise, the adjective (monogenes) may hold no special
significance. After all, John alternates between monogenes huios, or simply the
“Son”–often paired in rhetorical opposition to the “Father”–or the “Son of
God.” In the Fourth Gospel and 1 John, the Apostle John uses monogenes [huios] 5
times, the “Son of God” 15 times, and the “Son” 34 times. So monogenes huios
may just be a stylistic variation, interchangeable with John’s other sonship
usages. These linguistic variants may well function as rough synonyms in
Johannine usage.
vi)Jesus’ subordinate status is sometimes inferred from the
fact that the Father sends the Son. Sending is taken to be an act of authority.
The one sent is under the authority of the sender.
However, the Fourth Gospel often discusses the sender/sent
relation to accentuate where the Son comes from. To highlight his divine
preexistence.
He comes from above. He belongs to the divine realm rather
than the created realm. In the divide between God and the world, he occupies
the divine side of the divide. The Son can only be sent into the world because
he doesn’t come from the world in the first place–any more than God the Father.
You can’t artificially abstract the sender/sent relation
from that larger narrative context.
vii) In addition, the Father-sender/Son-sent relationship
isn’t equivalent to God sending an angel or God sending a prophet. Notice, in
the Fourth Gospel, how the sending of John the Baptist is contrasted with the
sending of the Son. Although the Baptist can speak on behalf of God, he doesn’t
reveal God in his own person, as Jesus does. There’s a categorical difference.
viii) The upshot of all this is that it’s quite
possible–indeed, preferable–to affirm the eternal sonship of Christ, but deny
the eternal generation of the Son.
a) One might object that that’s arbitrary, that generation
and sonship are interrelated. They may be biologically related, but that
doesn’t mean substitutable metaphors in Scripture. Each can have its own set of
connotations. Each can have its own set of literary trajectories. They don’t
necessarily (or even probably) bleed or blur into each other, any more than
Davidic sonship is equivalent to divine sonship.
Even where metaphors overlap, that doesn’t tell you in
advance where they overlap in a particular writer’s argument or narrative.
Related metaphors may intersect at various points, but that doesn’t mean an
author intends all those potential connotations to be active connotations.
Indeed, that could be quite confusing.
A writer may just as well exploit what’s distinctive to a particular
metaphor, rather than what is common to two related metaphors.
For instance, here are four theological metaphors for God
in Scripture: king, father, potter, shepherd. These have overlapping
connotations, but they also have distinctive connotations. Indeed, that’s why
Scripture uses four rather than one. In some respect they’re comparable, in
other respect they’re contrastive.
Moreover, even considered individually, they are
intentionally limited metaphors. Many things which are true of human kings,
fathers, potters, and shepherds are not true of God. So we must be sensitive to
what a bible writer specifically means by any particular metaphor. We must
carefully study the context.
b) And that’s even assuming that Scripture uses
“only-begotten.” Or that “only-begotten” retains a distinctive semantic nuance.
Or that the metaphor is meant to single out source of origin.
vii) Taken to a logical extreme, the alleged monarchy of the
Father shifts the Christian faith off-center. NT piety is pervasively centered
on the Son, not the Father. Indeed, it’s a tribute to the deferential humility
of the Father and the Spirit that the Son takes center stage while they largely
remain in the shadows. And that’s because there’s no rivalry among equals. They
have nothing to lose or gain. There’s no one-upmanship in the Trinity. Instead
of vying for top billing, they honor each other.
