Does anybody have any info on this?
From another board:
From another board:
Calvin claimed that:
The beginning of deity not in the bestowing of essence, as fanatics babble, but by reason of order. Institutes I.13.24
Explicitly denying the eternal generation of the Son he continued:
We teach from the Scriptures that God is one in essence, and hence that the essence of the Son and of the Spirit is unbegotten. I.13.25
This is a direct denial of the eternal generation of the Son, that he is 'God from God'. This is acknowledged.
Calvinist John Murray writes concerning this time:
Students of historical theology are acquainted with the furore which Calvin's insistence upon the self-existence of the Son as to his deity aroused at the time of the Reformation. Calvin was too much a student of Scripture to be content to follow the lines of what had been regarded as Nicene orthodoxy on this particular issue. He was too jealous for the implications of the homo-ousion clause of the Nicene creed to be willing to accede to the interpretation which the Nicene fathers, including Athanasius, placed upon another expression in the same creed, namely 'Very God of Very God'...this evidence shows that the meaning intended is that the Son derived his deity from the Father and that the Son was not therefore autotheos. It was precisely this position that Calvin controverted with vigour. (Systematic Theology, Westminster Theological Journal 25)
Presbyterian scholar Robert Reymond echoes this:
In chapter nine, I urge upon my reader the Reformation view of the Trinity, which is distinctly different in some respects from the "œNiceno-Constantinopolitan" representation of that doctrine which held sway for over thirteen hundred years before it was challenged by John Calvin and which, regrettably, is still espoused unwittingly by too many of his followers. (Preface, A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith, First Edition)