What Are The Implications Of Denying Eternal Generation?
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Peairtach
Puritan Board Doctor
Some of the orthodox have questioned this doctrine e.g. Calvin, Institutes, Book One, Chapter Thirteen. Calvin apparently held to the eternal generation of the Son's Person, but not His essence.
It's questioning would seem to lead to a difficulty in distinguishing the members of the ontological Trinity from one another, since the fact of the Son's person being begotten by the Father, and the Spirit's spiration/procession from the Father and the Son is what distinguishes the Three from each other.
There is no problem with subordinationism in holding to eternal generation and eternal spiration, because the Father is just as dependent on the Son and Spirit as are the Son and Spirit on Him.
This is closely connected with the translation of the Greek word monogenes which is translated as only begotten in the KJV and one and only in some versions e.g. NIV.
Here is a defense of eternal generation
The Upper Register: Papers and mp3's by Lee Irons
It's questioning would seem to lead to a difficulty in distinguishing the members of the ontological Trinity from one another, since the fact of the Son's person being begotten by the Father, and the Spirit's spiration/procession from the Father and the Son is what distinguishes the Three from each other.
There is no problem with subordinationism in holding to eternal generation and eternal spiration, because the Father is just as dependent on the Son and Spirit as are the Son and Spirit on Him.
This is closely connected with the translation of the Greek word monogenes which is translated as only begotten in the KJV and one and only in some versions e.g. NIV.
Here is a defense of eternal generation
The Upper Register: Papers and mp3's by Lee Irons
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Prufrock
Arbitrary Moderation
Even with the added qualification, I find the first sentence problematic. Calvin vigorously defended the eternal generation of the Son. Regarding the relationship between generation personal and essential, it is a highly nuanced conversation in the Reformed tradition, and must studies, indeed, note certain aspects of Calvin's position being held by few in the tradition; but in no way do any of the positions of the orthodox deny or question the Son's eternal generation. I'm not attacking you; I just want it to be clear to any in whom this statement may cause doubt: Calvin vigorously defended the eternal generation of the Son.
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Peairtach
Puritan Board Doctor
Yes, forgive me Prufrock and KMK for being too hasty in my comments.
The difference is between the orthodox Reformed over the eternal generation of essence and/or person, not eternal generation itself.
Sorry about that.
Calvin says at Book 1, Chapter 13,
"But, studying the edification of the Church, I have thought it better not to touch upon many things, which would be unecessarily burdensome to the reader, without yielding him any profit. For to what purpose is it to dispute, whether the Father is always begetting? For it is foolish to imagine a continual act of generation, since it is evident that three Persons have subsisted in God from all eternity."
John McArthur is someone who did not hold to Christ's Eternal Sonship but now does. A denial of such leads to a lack of distinctions in the ontological Trinity.
The difference is between the orthodox Reformed over the eternal generation of essence and/or person, not eternal generation itself.
Sorry about that.
Calvin says at Book 1, Chapter 13,
"But, studying the edification of the Church, I have thought it better not to touch upon many things, which would be unecessarily burdensome to the reader, without yielding him any profit. For to what purpose is it to dispute, whether the Father is always begetting? For it is foolish to imagine a continual act of generation, since it is evident that three Persons have subsisted in God from all eternity."
John McArthur is someone who did not hold to Christ's Eternal Sonship but now does. A denial of such leads to a lack of distinctions in the ontological Trinity.
As do the reformed orthodox. The divine essence is communicated from one Person to Another, but the generation is regarded as terminating on the Person; otherwise the result would be three essences.
Opposition
Because the terminology of "generated" and "begotten" can be mistaken to imply a temporal or even a fleshly analogy, there have been objections to this terminology, even though these terms are used to refer to the mysterious and eternal relationship between the Father and the Son. Nevertheless, it is confessional Reformed orthodoxy that Jesus Christ reveals eternal relationships within God, which are not arbitrary or reversible "roles": he is eternally the Son to the Father, without any implication of ontological subordination.[7][8] However, some Reformed theologians, in recent times notably Loraine Boettner and Robert Reymond, object to what they perceive as a confusion of the way God has chosen to enact his will (the "economic Trinity"), with who and what God is as God (the "immanent Trinity"). Such objections are comparable to some Eastern Orthodox theology, such as that of Gregory Palamas, which teaches that God is not at all knowable in his essence but in his energies only: that is, what he wills may be known if he so chooses, but God as such transcends revelation and therefore he is hidden rather than revealed by words and names. In Eastern Orthodox theology, at least, this approach leads to an apophatic (negative) approach to knowing God - a theology by negation of rational assertions. This contrasts with cataphatic theology, which demands acceptance of assertions made by God concerning himself — an approach which otherwise characterizes the work of these Reformed theologians.
Loraine Boettner
Loraine Boettner argues in The Trinity that the Son and Spirit are not in any sense "dependent upon another as their principal cause", which would seem to suggest that Boettner misunderstood the doctrine as teaching that generation and procession are effects rather than acts of communication entirely without change in being. He evidently is concerned with protecting against the implication that the Father exists prior to the Son and Spirit, when he says:
"... when the Scriptures tell us that one Person within the Trinity is known as the "Father," and another as the "Son," they intend to teach not that the Son is originated by the Father, nor that the Father existed prior to the Son, but that they are the same in nature."[9]
In this, Boettner departs from the Nicene Creed and supposes that he may enlist Calvin for support, but based on a misunderstanding of Nicea. Under his discussion of the procession of the Spirit, Boettner goes farther, to strongly suggest that each of the Persons is an autonomous entity, arguing that generation and procession imply subordination or derivation of being:
"[W]ithin the essential life of the Trinity no one Person is prior to, nor generated by, nor proceeds from, another, and that such priority and subordination as we find revealed in the works of creation, redemption and sanctification, relate not to the immanent but to the economic Trinity." [10]
Boettner's view of Nicene-Chalcedonian Trinitarianism conflicts with the orthodox understanding of it, that the Son has eternal relation to the Father by eternal communication, by eternally sharing in the Father's being and glory as the one God, without subtraction from the Father, without dividing his being, without multiplying entities, and without the Father adding to Himself.
Robert Reymond
Reymond discusses his objections in A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith. [11] Departing from orthodox Reformed theology of the Trinity, Reformed theologian Robert Reymond is rather emphatic in his rejection of eternal generation and procession. For Reymond, it is clear that Father, Son, and Spirit relate in covenant; he places distinctive emphasis on the equal self-existence of each person and the arbitrariness of the roles enacted by them. The subordination in their roles in salvation indicate nothing about what they are ontologically; and therefore, the name "Father, Son and Holy Spirit" is not a revelation of who God is, but rather only a revelation of God's purposes.
http://www.theopedia.com/Eternal_generation_of_the_Son#Loraine_Boettner
STUDIES IN THEOLOGY (1947AD edition)
by LORAINE BOETTNER. TH.M., D.D.
CHAPTER III THE TRINITY
8. The Generation of the Son and the Procession of the Holy Spirit
The kindred doctrines of the Eternal Generation of the Son and of the Eternal Procession of the Holy Spirit are admittedly doctrines which are but very obscurely understood by the best of theologians. Certainly the present writer, with his limited study and experience, is not under the delusion that he shall be able to give a fully satisfactory explanation of them. He proposes only to define the doctrines and to offer a few brief comments.
The Eternal Generation of the Son, as stated by a representative theologian, is defined as: “an eternal personal act of the Father, wherein, by necessity of nature, not by choice of will, He generates the person (not the essence) of the Son, by communicating to Him the whole indivisible substance of the Godhead, without division, alienation, or change, so that the Son is the express image of His Father's person, and eternally continues, not from the Father, but in the Father, and the Father in the Son” (Dr. A. A. Hodge, Outlines of Theology, p. 182).
The following Scripture verses are commonly given as the principal support of this doctrine: “For as the Father hath life in himself, even so gave He to the Son also to have life in himself” (John 5:25); “Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me” (John 14:11); “Even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee” (John 17:21); “That ye may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father” (John 10:38); Christ is declared to be “the effulgence of his glory, and the very image of his substance” (Heb. 1:3); “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:16).
The present writer feels constrained to say, however, that in his opinion the verses quoted do not teach the doctrine in question. He feels that the primary purpose of these and similar verses is to teach that Christ is intimately associated with the Father, that He is equal with the Father in power and glory, that He is, in fact, full Deity, rather than to teach that His Person is generated by or originates in an eternal process which is going on within the Godhead. Even though the attempt is made to safeguard the essential equality of the Son by saying that the process by which the Son is generated is eternal and necessary, he does not feel that the attempt is successful. If, as even Augustine, for instance, asserts, the Father is the Fons Trinitatis--the fountain or source of the Trinity--from whom both the Son and the Spirit are derived, it seems that in spite of all else we may say we have made the Son and the Spirit dependent upon another as their principal cause, and have destroyed the true and essential equality between the Persons of the Trinity. As we have stated before, when the Scriptures tell us that one Person within the Trinity is known as the “Father,” and another as the “Son,” they intend to teach, not that the Son is originated by the Father, nor that the Father existed prior to the Son, but that they are the same in nature.
This, apparently, was also the position held by Calvin, for at the conclusion of his chapter on the Trinity he says:
“But, studying the edification of the Church, I have thought it better not to touch upon many things, which would be unnecessarily burdensome to the reader, without yielding him any profit. For to what purpose is it to dispute, whether the Father is always begetting? For it is foolish to imagine a continual act of generation, since it is evident that three Persons have subsisted in God from all eternity” (Institutes, Book I, Chap. 13).
PROCESSION OF THE HOLY SPIRIT
The Procession of the Holy Spirit has commonly been understood to designate “the relation which the third person sustains to the first and second, wherein by an eternal and necessary, i.e., not voluntary, act of the Father and the Son, their whole identical divine essence, without alienation, division, or change, is communicated to the Holy Ghost” (Dr. A. A. Hodge, Outlines of Theology, p. 189).
“Procession” is a more general term that “Generation,” although in each case the process is admittedly inscrutable. Procession is said to differ from Generation in that the Son is generated by the Father only, while the Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son at the same time,--or as some have put it, proceeds from the Father, through the Son.
What we have said concerning the alleged Scripture proof for the doctrine of the generation of the Son is even more applicable to that which is advanced to prove the procession of the Spirit. There is, in fact, only one verse in Scripture which is commonly put forward to prove this doctrine, and it is found in John 15:26: “But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall bear witness of me.” Again, the best Bible scholars are divided as to whether or not this verse teaches the “procession” of the Spirit in the sense that His Person originates as the result of an inscrutable although eternal and necessary process within the Godhead, or whether the verse merely has reference to His mission in this world as He comes to apply the redemption which Christ purchased. Jesus uses a similar form of expression when of His own redemptive mission He says, “I came out from the Father, and am come into the world: again, I leave the world. and go unto the Father” (John 16:28). In the original Greek the phrase, “came out from,” which is here used of Jesus, is stronger than the “proceedeth from,” which is used of the Spirit; yet the context of John 16:28 makes it perfectly clear that what Jesus said of Himself had reference to His mission and not to what is commonly termed His eternal generation; for His coming forth from the Father into the world is contrasted with His leaving the world and going back to the Father. We are, of course, told that the Holy Spirit is sent by the Father and by the Son; but the mission as He comes to apply redemption is an entirely different thing from the procession. It seems much more natural to assume that the words of John 15:26, which were a part of the Farewell Discourse, and which were, therefore, spoken within the very shadow of the cross, were not philosophical but practical, designed to meet a present and urgent need, namely, to comfort and strengthen the disciples for the ordeal through which they too were soon to pass. This was His method of teaching on other occasions, and it is at least difficult to see why He would have departed from it on this occasion. He was soon to leave the disciples, and He simply gave them the promise that another Helper, who likewise comes from the Father, shall take His place and be to them what He has been and do for them what He has done. It would seem that, since they hardly knew of the Spirit as yet, this would not all have been an appropriate occasion to instruct them concerning the metaphysical relation which subsists between the Father and the Spirit. They are taught rather that the Spirit comes with divine authority, and that He is continually going forth from the Father to fulfill His purposes of Grace.
Hence John 15:26, at best, carries no decisive weight concerning the doctrine of the procession of the Spirit, if, indeed, it is not quite clearly designed to serve an entirely different purpose. We prefer to say, as previously stated, that within the essential life of the Trinity no one Person is prior to, nor generated by, nor proceeds from, another, and that such priority and subordination as we find revealed in the works of creation, redemption and sanctification, relate not to the immanent but to the economic Trinity.
Historically, the doctrine of the Procession of the Holy Spirit, which supposedly is of lesser consequence than that of the Generation of the Son, has been perverted and exaggerated out of all proportion to its real importance, and has been made the object of bitter and prolonged controversy between the Eastern and Western churches. It was, in fact, the immediate occasion of the split in Christendom in the eleventh century, and to this day it constitutes the main difference in doctrine between the Greek Orthodox and the Roman Catholic churches. The Greek church has maintained that the Spirit proceeds from the Father only, while the Latin church, and also the Protestant churches generally, have maintained that He proceeds from both the Father and the Son. But certainly the evidence for the doctrine is too scanty, and its meaning too obscure, to justify the hard feeling and the ecclesiastical division which has resulted from it.
9. The Trinity Presents a Mystery but not a Contradiction
To expect that we who do not understand ourselves nor the forces of nature about us should understand the deep mysteries of the Godhead would certainly be to the last degree unreasonable. Of all the Christian doctrines this is perhaps the most difficult to understand or to explain. That God exists as a Trinity has been clearly revealed in Scripture; but the particular mode in which the three Persons exist has not been revealed. When we behold the Triune God we feel like one who gazes upon the midday sun. The finite is not able to comprehend the infinite; and the marvellous personality of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit remains and must ever remain a profound mystery regardless of all the study that the greatest theologians of the Church have expended upon it. When we try to grasp its meaning the words in Job come to mind, “Canst thou by searching find out God? Canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection?” The question answers itself.
In every sphere we are called upon to believe many truths which we cannot explain. What, for instance, is light? What gives the force of gravity its pull, and through what medium does it act? How does the mind make contact with the physical brain?
“There are many things in the world which are true but which cannot be understood,” says Dr. Floyd E. Hamilton. “What is the real nature of electricity? What is life? What enables a human body to turn the same food into bone, teeth, flesh, and hair? These are but a few of the questions which man has never been able to answer, and probably never will, but that fact does not affect their truth. They exist, and their existence does not depend upon their understanding them. In the same way, the Triune God exists and His existence does not depend upon our understanding the mysteries of His nature” (The Basis of Christian Faith, p. 278).
And Dr. David S. Clark remarks:
“We must distinguish between apprehension and comprehension. We can know what God is, without knowing all He is. We can touch the earth while not able to embrace it in our arms. The child can know God while the philosopher cannot find out the Almighty unto perfection (A Syllabus of Systematic Theology, p. 59).
“It is a mystery indeed,” says Professor Flint, “yet one which explains many other mysteries, and which sheds a marvellous light on God, on nature, and on man” (Anti-Theistic Theories, p. 439).
Most people will admit, for instance, that they do not understand Einstein's theory of relativity; yet few will be so bold as to declare it irrational. We do not understand how such a vast amount of energy can be locked up within the atom; but the recently developed atomic bomb proves beyond doubt that it is there. Unless God were too great for our full intellectual comprehension, He would surely be too small to satisfy our spiritual needs.
But while the doctrine of the Trinity presents a mystery, it does not present a contradiction. It asserts that God is one in one respect in substance or essence--and that He is three in an entirely different respect--in personal distinctions; and the charge of anti-trinitarians, that there is no middle ground between the Unitarian position (which asserts the unity of God but denies the Deity of Christ and the personality of the Holy Spirit) and Tritheism (which asserts that there are three Gods) is easily refuted by this fact. The doctrine of the Trinity is above reason, and could never have been discovered by man apart from divine revelation; yet it cannot be proved contrary to reason, nor inconsistent with any other truth which we know concerning God.
Furthermore, we hardly see how any one can insist that the doctrine of the Trinity strikes the average person as unreasonable when as a matter of fact Pantheism (which holds that every person and every thing which exists is but one of the innumerable forms in which God exists) is the form of philosophy which has been the most widely diffused and the most persistently held by the various peoples down through the ages. If the human mind has been able to conceive of God as existing in such an infinite number of forms, surely the statement that He exists in three Persons should not be hard to believe. The fact is that the doctrine as presented in Scripture is found to be eminently agreeable to reason. The historic Christian Church in all its branches has held tenaciously to this doctrine; and on the part of individuals the deepest and truest and most fruitful Christian faith has been found in those who have had an experimental knowledge and fellowship not only with God the Father, but also with Christ the Son and with the Holy Spirit,--that is, in Evangelicals as distinguished from Unitarians and Modernists.
Let it be remembered that we are under no obligation to explain all the mysteries connected with this doctrine. We are only under obligation to set forth what the Scriptures teach concerning it, and to vindicate the teaching as far as possible from the objections that are alleged against it. It is a doctrine which should never be presented to an unbeliever as a subject for argumentative proof, for it can be accepted only by faith, and that only after the person is convinced that God has spoken and that He has revealed this as a truth concerning Himself. With the Psalmist we are compelled to say, “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it” (139:6); and with Athanasius, “Man can perceive only the hem of the garment of God; the cherubim cover the rest with their wings.” But though we are not able to give a full explanation of our faith we may know, and should know, what we believe and what we do not believe, and should be acquainted with the facts and truth on which our faith rests.
Many analogies have been given down through the ages to illustrate this doctrine, but we had as well admit that none of them have been of any special value and that some of them have been positively misleading. Some of the more common are: body, soul and spirit, or intellect, emotion and will in man; stem, flower and seed in the plant; egg, larva and butterfly in the insect; solid, liquid and gas in matter; light, heat and radiance in the sun, etc. None of these, however, are true analogies. All of them fail to do justice to the personal element, particularly to the tri-personal element, in the Godhead. The best of them, that of intellect, emotion and will in man, presents three functions in one person, but not three persons in one substance. Those of the solid, liquid and gas, or of the egg, larva and butterfly, are not Christian, but Unitarian; for they represent the same substance as going through three successive stages.
Since there is none like God,--for “to whom will ye liken God, or what likeness will ye compare unto Him,”--we shall look in vain for any explanation of the Trinity either in the structure of our own minds or in nature about us. As the Trinity is not discoverable by reason in the first place, so it is not capable of proof by reason in the second place. We receive it only because it is taught in Scripture, and just as it is taught there. As Luther said concerning this doctrine
“We should, like the little children, stammer out what the Scriptures teach: that the Father is truly God, that Christ is truly God, that the Holy Ghost is truly God, and yet that here are not three Gods, or three Beings, as there are three men, three angels, or three windows.”
Because the terminology of "generated" and "begotten" can be mistaken to imply a temporal or even a fleshly analogy, there have been objections to this terminology, even though these terms are used to refer to the mysterious and eternal relationship between the Father and the Son. Nevertheless, it is confessional Reformed orthodoxy that Jesus Christ reveals eternal relationships within God, which are not arbitrary or reversible "roles": he is eternally the Son to the Father, without any implication of ontological subordination.[7][8] However, some Reformed theologians, in recent times notably Loraine Boettner and Robert Reymond, object to what they perceive as a confusion of the way God has chosen to enact his will (the "economic Trinity"), with who and what God is as God (the "immanent Trinity"). Such objections are comparable to some Eastern Orthodox theology, such as that of Gregory Palamas, which teaches that God is not at all knowable in his essence but in his energies only: that is, what he wills may be known if he so chooses, but God as such transcends revelation and therefore he is hidden rather than revealed by words and names. In Eastern Orthodox theology, at least, this approach leads to an apophatic (negative) approach to knowing God - a theology by negation of rational assertions. This contrasts with cataphatic theology, which demands acceptance of assertions made by God concerning himself — an approach which otherwise characterizes the work of these Reformed theologians.
Loraine Boettner
Loraine Boettner argues in The Trinity that the Son and Spirit are not in any sense "dependent upon another as their principal cause", which would seem to suggest that Boettner misunderstood the doctrine as teaching that generation and procession are effects rather than acts of communication entirely without change in being. He evidently is concerned with protecting against the implication that the Father exists prior to the Son and Spirit, when he says:
"... when the Scriptures tell us that one Person within the Trinity is known as the "Father," and another as the "Son," they intend to teach not that the Son is originated by the Father, nor that the Father existed prior to the Son, but that they are the same in nature."[9]
In this, Boettner departs from the Nicene Creed and supposes that he may enlist Calvin for support, but based on a misunderstanding of Nicea. Under his discussion of the procession of the Spirit, Boettner goes farther, to strongly suggest that each of the Persons is an autonomous entity, arguing that generation and procession imply subordination or derivation of being:
"[W]ithin the essential life of the Trinity no one Person is prior to, nor generated by, nor proceeds from, another, and that such priority and subordination as we find revealed in the works of creation, redemption and sanctification, relate not to the immanent but to the economic Trinity." [10]
Boettner's view of Nicene-Chalcedonian Trinitarianism conflicts with the orthodox understanding of it, that the Son has eternal relation to the Father by eternal communication, by eternally sharing in the Father's being and glory as the one God, without subtraction from the Father, without dividing his being, without multiplying entities, and without the Father adding to Himself.
Robert Reymond
Reymond discusses his objections in A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith. [11] Departing from orthodox Reformed theology of the Trinity, Reformed theologian Robert Reymond is rather emphatic in his rejection of eternal generation and procession. For Reymond, it is clear that Father, Son, and Spirit relate in covenant; he places distinctive emphasis on the equal self-existence of each person and the arbitrariness of the roles enacted by them. The subordination in their roles in salvation indicate nothing about what they are ontologically; and therefore, the name "Father, Son and Holy Spirit" is not a revelation of who God is, but rather only a revelation of God's purposes.
http://www.theopedia.com/Eternal_generation_of_the_Son#Loraine_Boettner
STUDIES IN THEOLOGY (1947AD edition)
by LORAINE BOETTNER. TH.M., D.D.
CHAPTER III THE TRINITY
8. The Generation of the Son and the Procession of the Holy Spirit
The kindred doctrines of the Eternal Generation of the Son and of the Eternal Procession of the Holy Spirit are admittedly doctrines which are but very obscurely understood by the best of theologians. Certainly the present writer, with his limited study and experience, is not under the delusion that he shall be able to give a fully satisfactory explanation of them. He proposes only to define the doctrines and to offer a few brief comments.
The Eternal Generation of the Son, as stated by a representative theologian, is defined as: “an eternal personal act of the Father, wherein, by necessity of nature, not by choice of will, He generates the person (not the essence) of the Son, by communicating to Him the whole indivisible substance of the Godhead, without division, alienation, or change, so that the Son is the express image of His Father's person, and eternally continues, not from the Father, but in the Father, and the Father in the Son” (Dr. A. A. Hodge, Outlines of Theology, p. 182).
The following Scripture verses are commonly given as the principal support of this doctrine: “For as the Father hath life in himself, even so gave He to the Son also to have life in himself” (John 5:25); “Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me” (John 14:11); “Even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee” (John 17:21); “That ye may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father” (John 10:38); Christ is declared to be “the effulgence of his glory, and the very image of his substance” (Heb. 1:3); “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:16).
The present writer feels constrained to say, however, that in his opinion the verses quoted do not teach the doctrine in question. He feels that the primary purpose of these and similar verses is to teach that Christ is intimately associated with the Father, that He is equal with the Father in power and glory, that He is, in fact, full Deity, rather than to teach that His Person is generated by or originates in an eternal process which is going on within the Godhead. Even though the attempt is made to safeguard the essential equality of the Son by saying that the process by which the Son is generated is eternal and necessary, he does not feel that the attempt is successful. If, as even Augustine, for instance, asserts, the Father is the Fons Trinitatis--the fountain or source of the Trinity--from whom both the Son and the Spirit are derived, it seems that in spite of all else we may say we have made the Son and the Spirit dependent upon another as their principal cause, and have destroyed the true and essential equality between the Persons of the Trinity. As we have stated before, when the Scriptures tell us that one Person within the Trinity is known as the “Father,” and another as the “Son,” they intend to teach, not that the Son is originated by the Father, nor that the Father existed prior to the Son, but that they are the same in nature.
This, apparently, was also the position held by Calvin, for at the conclusion of his chapter on the Trinity he says:
“But, studying the edification of the Church, I have thought it better not to touch upon many things, which would be unnecessarily burdensome to the reader, without yielding him any profit. For to what purpose is it to dispute, whether the Father is always begetting? For it is foolish to imagine a continual act of generation, since it is evident that three Persons have subsisted in God from all eternity” (Institutes, Book I, Chap. 13).
PROCESSION OF THE HOLY SPIRIT
The Procession of the Holy Spirit has commonly been understood to designate “the relation which the third person sustains to the first and second, wherein by an eternal and necessary, i.e., not voluntary, act of the Father and the Son, their whole identical divine essence, without alienation, division, or change, is communicated to the Holy Ghost” (Dr. A. A. Hodge, Outlines of Theology, p. 189).
“Procession” is a more general term that “Generation,” although in each case the process is admittedly inscrutable. Procession is said to differ from Generation in that the Son is generated by the Father only, while the Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son at the same time,--or as some have put it, proceeds from the Father, through the Son.
What we have said concerning the alleged Scripture proof for the doctrine of the generation of the Son is even more applicable to that which is advanced to prove the procession of the Spirit. There is, in fact, only one verse in Scripture which is commonly put forward to prove this doctrine, and it is found in John 15:26: “But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall bear witness of me.” Again, the best Bible scholars are divided as to whether or not this verse teaches the “procession” of the Spirit in the sense that His Person originates as the result of an inscrutable although eternal and necessary process within the Godhead, or whether the verse merely has reference to His mission in this world as He comes to apply the redemption which Christ purchased. Jesus uses a similar form of expression when of His own redemptive mission He says, “I came out from the Father, and am come into the world: again, I leave the world. and go unto the Father” (John 16:28). In the original Greek the phrase, “came out from,” which is here used of Jesus, is stronger than the “proceedeth from,” which is used of the Spirit; yet the context of John 16:28 makes it perfectly clear that what Jesus said of Himself had reference to His mission and not to what is commonly termed His eternal generation; for His coming forth from the Father into the world is contrasted with His leaving the world and going back to the Father. We are, of course, told that the Holy Spirit is sent by the Father and by the Son; but the mission as He comes to apply redemption is an entirely different thing from the procession. It seems much more natural to assume that the words of John 15:26, which were a part of the Farewell Discourse, and which were, therefore, spoken within the very shadow of the cross, were not philosophical but practical, designed to meet a present and urgent need, namely, to comfort and strengthen the disciples for the ordeal through which they too were soon to pass. This was His method of teaching on other occasions, and it is at least difficult to see why He would have departed from it on this occasion. He was soon to leave the disciples, and He simply gave them the promise that another Helper, who likewise comes from the Father, shall take His place and be to them what He has been and do for them what He has done. It would seem that, since they hardly knew of the Spirit as yet, this would not all have been an appropriate occasion to instruct them concerning the metaphysical relation which subsists between the Father and the Spirit. They are taught rather that the Spirit comes with divine authority, and that He is continually going forth from the Father to fulfill His purposes of Grace.
Hence John 15:26, at best, carries no decisive weight concerning the doctrine of the procession of the Spirit, if, indeed, it is not quite clearly designed to serve an entirely different purpose. We prefer to say, as previously stated, that within the essential life of the Trinity no one Person is prior to, nor generated by, nor proceeds from, another, and that such priority and subordination as we find revealed in the works of creation, redemption and sanctification, relate not to the immanent but to the economic Trinity.
Historically, the doctrine of the Procession of the Holy Spirit, which supposedly is of lesser consequence than that of the Generation of the Son, has been perverted and exaggerated out of all proportion to its real importance, and has been made the object of bitter and prolonged controversy between the Eastern and Western churches. It was, in fact, the immediate occasion of the split in Christendom in the eleventh century, and to this day it constitutes the main difference in doctrine between the Greek Orthodox and the Roman Catholic churches. The Greek church has maintained that the Spirit proceeds from the Father only, while the Latin church, and also the Protestant churches generally, have maintained that He proceeds from both the Father and the Son. But certainly the evidence for the doctrine is too scanty, and its meaning too obscure, to justify the hard feeling and the ecclesiastical division which has resulted from it.
9. The Trinity Presents a Mystery but not a Contradiction
To expect that we who do not understand ourselves nor the forces of nature about us should understand the deep mysteries of the Godhead would certainly be to the last degree unreasonable. Of all the Christian doctrines this is perhaps the most difficult to understand or to explain. That God exists as a Trinity has been clearly revealed in Scripture; but the particular mode in which the three Persons exist has not been revealed. When we behold the Triune God we feel like one who gazes upon the midday sun. The finite is not able to comprehend the infinite; and the marvellous personality of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit remains and must ever remain a profound mystery regardless of all the study that the greatest theologians of the Church have expended upon it. When we try to grasp its meaning the words in Job come to mind, “Canst thou by searching find out God? Canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection?” The question answers itself.
In every sphere we are called upon to believe many truths which we cannot explain. What, for instance, is light? What gives the force of gravity its pull, and through what medium does it act? How does the mind make contact with the physical brain?
“There are many things in the world which are true but which cannot be understood,” says Dr. Floyd E. Hamilton. “What is the real nature of electricity? What is life? What enables a human body to turn the same food into bone, teeth, flesh, and hair? These are but a few of the questions which man has never been able to answer, and probably never will, but that fact does not affect their truth. They exist, and their existence does not depend upon their understanding them. In the same way, the Triune God exists and His existence does not depend upon our understanding the mysteries of His nature” (The Basis of Christian Faith, p. 278).
And Dr. David S. Clark remarks:
“We must distinguish between apprehension and comprehension. We can know what God is, without knowing all He is. We can touch the earth while not able to embrace it in our arms. The child can know God while the philosopher cannot find out the Almighty unto perfection (A Syllabus of Systematic Theology, p. 59).
“It is a mystery indeed,” says Professor Flint, “yet one which explains many other mysteries, and which sheds a marvellous light on God, on nature, and on man” (Anti-Theistic Theories, p. 439).
Most people will admit, for instance, that they do not understand Einstein's theory of relativity; yet few will be so bold as to declare it irrational. We do not understand how such a vast amount of energy can be locked up within the atom; but the recently developed atomic bomb proves beyond doubt that it is there. Unless God were too great for our full intellectual comprehension, He would surely be too small to satisfy our spiritual needs.
But while the doctrine of the Trinity presents a mystery, it does not present a contradiction. It asserts that God is one in one respect in substance or essence--and that He is three in an entirely different respect--in personal distinctions; and the charge of anti-trinitarians, that there is no middle ground between the Unitarian position (which asserts the unity of God but denies the Deity of Christ and the personality of the Holy Spirit) and Tritheism (which asserts that there are three Gods) is easily refuted by this fact. The doctrine of the Trinity is above reason, and could never have been discovered by man apart from divine revelation; yet it cannot be proved contrary to reason, nor inconsistent with any other truth which we know concerning God.
Furthermore, we hardly see how any one can insist that the doctrine of the Trinity strikes the average person as unreasonable when as a matter of fact Pantheism (which holds that every person and every thing which exists is but one of the innumerable forms in which God exists) is the form of philosophy which has been the most widely diffused and the most persistently held by the various peoples down through the ages. If the human mind has been able to conceive of God as existing in such an infinite number of forms, surely the statement that He exists in three Persons should not be hard to believe. The fact is that the doctrine as presented in Scripture is found to be eminently agreeable to reason. The historic Christian Church in all its branches has held tenaciously to this doctrine; and on the part of individuals the deepest and truest and most fruitful Christian faith has been found in those who have had an experimental knowledge and fellowship not only with God the Father, but also with Christ the Son and with the Holy Spirit,--that is, in Evangelicals as distinguished from Unitarians and Modernists.
Let it be remembered that we are under no obligation to explain all the mysteries connected with this doctrine. We are only under obligation to set forth what the Scriptures teach concerning it, and to vindicate the teaching as far as possible from the objections that are alleged against it. It is a doctrine which should never be presented to an unbeliever as a subject for argumentative proof, for it can be accepted only by faith, and that only after the person is convinced that God has spoken and that He has revealed this as a truth concerning Himself. With the Psalmist we are compelled to say, “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it” (139:6); and with Athanasius, “Man can perceive only the hem of the garment of God; the cherubim cover the rest with their wings.” But though we are not able to give a full explanation of our faith we may know, and should know, what we believe and what we do not believe, and should be acquainted with the facts and truth on which our faith rests.
Many analogies have been given down through the ages to illustrate this doctrine, but we had as well admit that none of them have been of any special value and that some of them have been positively misleading. Some of the more common are: body, soul and spirit, or intellect, emotion and will in man; stem, flower and seed in the plant; egg, larva and butterfly in the insect; solid, liquid and gas in matter; light, heat and radiance in the sun, etc. None of these, however, are true analogies. All of them fail to do justice to the personal element, particularly to the tri-personal element, in the Godhead. The best of them, that of intellect, emotion and will in man, presents three functions in one person, but not three persons in one substance. Those of the solid, liquid and gas, or of the egg, larva and butterfly, are not Christian, but Unitarian; for they represent the same substance as going through three successive stages.
Since there is none like God,--for “to whom will ye liken God, or what likeness will ye compare unto Him,”--we shall look in vain for any explanation of the Trinity either in the structure of our own minds or in nature about us. As the Trinity is not discoverable by reason in the first place, so it is not capable of proof by reason in the second place. We receive it only because it is taught in Scripture, and just as it is taught there. As Luther said concerning this doctrine
“We should, like the little children, stammer out what the Scriptures teach: that the Father is truly God, that Christ is truly God, that the Holy Ghost is truly God, and yet that here are not three Gods, or three Beings, as there are three men, three angels, or three windows.”
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