The current theological climate is an arid one indeed, especially concerning the person and work of Jesus Christ. Heresy, heterodoxy, and well-intentioned revisionism concerning the doctrine of Christ have strewn the landscape with buzzards, prickly cacti, and promising mirages of water, where there lurks only more sand. Against this wasteland, a robust retrieval and clarification of historic, orthodox Christian confession can be for us like water breaking forth in the wilderness and streams pooling up in the desert. The doctrine of eternal generation, as crystallized in the language of the Nicene fathers, is one such point of confession that Christians would do well to harken back to today. Even as the Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant branches of Christianity separated over issues of dogmatic authority, they have remained united in affirming a strong normativity concerning the propositions of Nicaea. The “catholic” conviction that fault lines of orthodoxy crack over Nicaea is itself a testimony to the scriptural warp and woof of the creed, as we will soon see.
At its core, the Nicene doctrine of eternal generation defines who and what Christ is by his relation to the Father. He is the eternal Son from the Father, and so is both not the Father himself, and yet has his life from the Father, making him one with the Father (and the Spirit, although this article focuses on the Father-Son relation). The thesis of this article is that the concepts and vocabulary of Nicene eternal generation are biblically warranted, demonstrated chiefly in Hebrews 1:1–14, John 1:1–18, and John 5:18–29. After examining three contemporary alternatives to Nicene eternal generation, we will distill three key aspects of Nicaea’s logic and vocabulary, elucidating their Scriptural warrant and coherence.
A Christological, Theological Barren Wasteland
Views of what constitutes the “son-ness” of God the Son Incarnate today range from outright heretical error to heterodox confusion to even well-meaning but misplaced concern. Biblicist Unitarianism, which fits the heretical error category, has regained some popularity among modern thinkers, such as Dale Tuggy, as well as through denominations like the Unitarian Christian Alliance and the Church of God General Conference. Liberal Unitarianism also maintains a foothold, as seen in the Universalist Unitarians. Unitarian views of son-ness vary. Some understand the Son to be a different economic expression of the Father as he relates to creatures, while others understand him to be a semi-divine creature or even a mere man. However, they all agree that YHWH is a singular person and that the doctrine of the Trinity is logically invalid.
Aberrant views of Christ’s sonship do not just reside outside the Evangelical world; heterodox confusion concerning eternal generation also appears among Evangelicals today. Some are holding to what may be described as “orthodox” non-eternal generation. This view formally denies eternal generation but maintains the eternal pre-existence of the second person of the Trinity (thus faulty, but not heretical). In other words, the sonship of the second person of the Trinity should be located within and on the basis of his incarnation alone. This position appears to be fueled by a misapplication of the modern discipline of biblical theology and a desire to re-humanize Christology. It places its emphasis on Christ’s human sonship via the virgin birth as the fulfillment of the sonship motif in Scripture.
Another area of concern gaining popularity, particularly within well-meaning confessional Reformed circles, might be described as revisionist-orthodox eternal generation. While this position formally accepts the orthodox language of Nicaea (e.g., “consubstantial” and “eternally begotten”) and the orthodox conclusions of Nicene theology (divinity, equality, and distinction between the divine persons), it does not accept Nicaea’s core logic of “fromness” because of concerns of ontological subordinationism: if the Son is eternally and imminently from the Father, then he seemingly is God in a dependent or derivative sense and not self-existent––a necessary attribute for one who is fully God.[1]
1. Ontological subordinationism is the view that the Son is less than fully divine and thus inferior in nature to the Father.
So, in light of these trends of heretical error, heterodox confusion, and misplaced concern, what exactly is the Nicene doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son, and moreover, is it biblically warranted?
(Re)-Enter the Christological, Theological Fount of Nicaea
In A.D. 325, a broad coalition of churchmen met at Nicaea to anathemize any notion of a time when the Son was not, to define generation as different from creation, and to rule that the Father and the Son are of the same being, nature, or essence (homoousion, consubstantial). Nicaea’s core insight was that he who is generated is necessarily of the same nature as the one who generates him: “God from God, light from light, true God from true God.”
Crucially, these churchmen were not seeking to invent a doctrine out of their own imagination or employ speculative Greek philosophy in order to clarify what Scripture had not. Rather, they were seeking to offer a close interpretation of Scripture. Of course, the statement of 325 itself was subject to interpretation as semi-Arians and semi-modalists alike imposed their own gloss upon what eternality and consubstantiality meant. However, the first council of Constantinople in 381 clarified the intent and meaning of the creed that we are more or less familiar with today––including the important distinction between terms like homoousion and hypostaseis (a distinction that was lacking in the formula of 325). And so, Constantinople solidified the trajectory of Nicene theology as a tradition, and, indeed, what many have learned as the “Nicene Creed” is actually the refined version from 381 known as the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed.
Concerning the divine nature and eternal generation of the Son, this Nicene theological tradition holds that the second hypostaseis, or person of the Trinity, exists
(1) as eternally and fully divine (full possession of YHWH’s nature, ousia),
(2) as eternally a Son of the Father (generation/filiation), and
(3) as eternally in real distinction to the Father (and the Spirit) by virtue of his generation alone––i.e., being “from” the Father.
The thesis of this article is that the concepts and vocabulary of Nicene eternal generation are biblically warranted, demonstrated chiefly in Hebrews 1:1–14, John 1:18, and John 5:18–29. Examining the logic behind these texts’ assertions about the Son will elucidate the Scriptural warrant and coherence of the three aspects of Nicaea’s doctrine of eternal generation outlined above.
Hebrews 1:1–14
In Hebrews 1:1–14, the author argues that the fullness of divine revelation has appeared through Christ the Son and explains that this is so because (1) the Son is the exact imprint or stamp of God’s nature, (2) he is the agent of creation, and (3) he is the one who wields the authority of YHWH by occupying his throne.
The Son is the Exact Imprint of the Father
Regarding the first point, Hebrews 1:3 describes the Son as the radiance of God the Father on the grounds that he is the exact imprint of what the Father is (Gr. hypostaseis). Some suggest this description means that Christ is in the image of God in the same sense that Adam, the first man, was in the image of God. However, there is too much discontinuity in the context, claims, and vocabulary for this view to be compelling. In Genesis, Adam is described as bearing the image (Hb. tselem, Gr. LXX eikōn) and likeness (Hb. d’muth, Gr. LXX homoiо̄sin) of God. In contrast, Hebrews 1:3 depicts the Son as the stamp or engraving (Gr. charaktēr) of who the Father is (Gr. hypostaseо̄s) such that he is the reflection, radiance, or effulgence (Gr. apaugasma) of the Father. The Nicene Creed captures the truth that Adam’s sonship is figurative and derivative, as is fitting to his creatureliness. His divine image-bearing is akin to what a king in the ancient Near East would do with statues bearing his likeness, as he had them erected throughout the land to represent his presence, glory, and authority. In contrast, however, the Son is so-named the exact representation of the Father’s being in a proper and formal sense because he is what his Father is. He is to the Father as the radiant beams of the sun are to the sun itself; we can only see the sun by the radiant beams proceeding from it (“light from light”). Similarly, he bears the identical form of the Father as an imprint bears the identical form of its stamp (“true God from true God”). Since Christ is described in Hebrews 1 as the Son of God in a more eminent and perfect sense than Adam ever was, having even the name and the worship of YHWH directed at himself, the framers of the Nicene Creed were justified in concluding that the Son is homoousion––of the same nature as the Father. Psalm 86:8 reminds us “There is none like you among the gods, O Lord, nor are there any works like yours” (cf., 89:6–7). Therefore, when Hebrews 1:3 says the Son is exactly what the Father is (his stamp and radiance) and performs the unique work of YHWH (upholding the universe by his power), the conclusion we should draw is that the Son is also YHWH. This leads to our second point because the identification of the Son’s divine nature in 1:3 is closely linked with attributing to him the singular work of the Creator God in 1:2 and 1:10.
The Son is the Father’s Agent of Creation
Concerning the second point, Hebrews 1:2 explicitly names the Son as the one through whom the Father created the world and also as the one who powerfully upholds the world even now with his word. Despite the suggestion of many Unitarians, it is quite impossible that the Son be both the Creator and yet also a creature who assists YHWH by executing the act of creation as a secondary and mediating agent because the Old Testament’s emphatic teaching is that YHWH “alone” and “by himself” made “all things” by his “own hands” (Isa. 44:24; 45:12). It is no small marvel that the New Testament teaches that the creation indeed came from the Father through the instrumental agency of the Son; Hebrews 1:3 clearly asserts this, as do other texts like 1 Corinthians 8:6, Colossians 1:16, and John 1:1–4. Therefore, either creation is from the Father who is YHWH and through the Son who is also YHWH, or the Son is not YHWH and YHWH did not actually himself make all things by his own hands as the Old Testament clearly teaches. In other words, if the Son is not YHWH, then one has to maintain either that the Old Testament got it wrong about YHWH’s creating work or that the New Testament is simply erroneous in its assertions about Jesus. The helpful insight of Nicene theology is that the Son’s (and Spirit’s) agency in creation is like that of two metaphorical hands: instruments of the Father and distinct from him, yet nothing other than YHWH himself. The author affirms our identification of the Creator-Son as YHWH himself a few verses later in 1:8–10, saying “of the Son, he says…‘You, Lord, laid the foundations of the earth in the beginning, and the heavens are the work of your hands.” This citation of Psalm 102:25–27 conclusively demonstrates that the author of Hebrews understood the Son to be YHWH because Psalm 102 not only describes the act of creation but also names YHWH as its subject. Since Hebrews 1:8–10 cites this passage and names this YHWH-Creator as the Creator-Son, then the Son necessarily is YHWH.
The Son Rules and Reigns as YHWH
Finally, concerning the third point, the author of Hebrews confirms that the Son is YHWH by teaching in verse eight that he sits on YHWH’s throne, citing Psalm 45:6–7. The eschatological Davidic king was understood to inherit an everlasting kingdom, established by YHWH for the purpose of administrating YHWH’s rule over his people. Hebrews 1:8 describes the Davidic Son as God, or, depending on how it is translated, describes him as possessing God’s throne.[2] Simultaneously, the author refers to God who establishes the Son’s throne (Heb. 1:13, citing Psalm 110:1). Many Unitarians take this reference to God establishing the Son’s throne as indicating that Jesus is not YHWH but a lesser god––either an exalted human or a condescending semi-divine figure, who needs to be established by God almighty. Such an interpretation overlooks the fact that other places in Scripture speak of this exalted eschatological Davidic king as YHWH himself, the great shepherd-king who has come at last to redeem and dwell among his people and beside whom there is no God or savior (Isa. 40:3–5, 9–11, 25–28; 43:10-11, 15; 44:6). There is thus tension between the Davidic king being depicted as YHWH and yet established by YHWH––tension in how it can be that no God is comparable to the shepherd-king YHWH, and yet, his throne is shared with the Davidic shepherd-king. The marvel of a text like Hebrews 1:8–13 is that it merges descriptions of YHWH with descriptions of the Davidic king and applies them jointly to the Son, resolving the tension over whether certain prophetic promises describe an eschatological Davidic king or YHWH himself. They describe both in the figure of the God-man, “God from God…who because of us men and because of our salvation came down and became incarnate and became man and suffered and rose again on the third day and ascended to the heavens and will come to judge the living and dead.” None of this means that there is not typology going on in Hebrews 1 between the human kings of the Davidic dynasty given a special status as “son of God” and Christ as their anti-type. On the contrary, this typology is quite evident, given the citation of Psalm 2 in Hebrews 1:5. There is no question that God the Son Incarnate is, by virtue of that incarnation, a son of God according to the flesh by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary. But crucially, the logic of Nicene theology is that types are cast in the form of their anti-type, not vice versa. The second person of the Trinity did not become a human son because, for some reason or another, there was first a mold of human-divine sonship in the Old Testament in which he needed to be cast in order to reflect them. Rather, the motif of God’s Son in the Old Testament (Adam, Israel, and David’s offspring)[3] are so-called because they foreshadowed the one who is properly called the Son of God by nature––the one who was to come as David’s offspring, yet Lord (Matt. 22:41–46), as the Isaianic servant Israel who was in the form of God and yet humbled himself (Isa. 48:16; 49:3, 5-6; 52:13–53:12; Phil. 2:7), and as the second and last Adam from heaven (1 Cor. 15:45–49). In short, then, references to the human aspect of Christ’s sonship in Hebrews 1 and other places should not point us away from his eternally divine sonship but rather cause us to look expectantly for it, precisely because types only exist in the first place to point forward to the more eminent reality of their anti-type. So, clearly Scripture teaches the first aspect of Nicaea’s doctrine of eternal generation outlined above––that the Son is eternally and fully divine. Further, the logic of Hebrews begins to shed light on the second and third aspects of Nicaea’s articulation––that the Son is eternally a Son of the Father and that his “son-ness” is what eternally distinguishes him as the second person of the Trinity. For a bit more help on these latter two aspects of the confession, we turn to John.
2. Since the form is vocative, and since it is contextually unlikely that the address to the Davidic king is being interpolated by a direct address to YHWH, Psalm 45:6 is best understood as directly addressing the Davidic king. One way to render the verse is “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever,” in which case the Davidic king is being called “God” because he represents God to the people by sitting on God’s throne. Alternatively, it could be translated as “Your throne, God’s, is forever and ever,” in which case the Davidic king is depicted as sitting on God’s throne as his representative but is not being called God. The translations are thus similar in meaning and both reflect messianic representation of the rule of YHWH; see 1 Chronicles 28:5, 29:3.
3. On Adam, Israel, David, and David’s offspring as types of God’s son, see Luke 3:38, Ex. 4:22, 2 Sam. 7:14, Psa. 2:7 and 89:26.
John 1:1–18
The first text of major help is John 1:1–18, which attributes the Son’s begotten-ness to his eternal, pre-existent life and glory. This speaks to the second aspect of Nicene eternal generation, which understands the Son-ness of the Son to be eternal. John 1:1 is, of course, the passage where we get the language of the Logos being both God and with God in the beginning, and verse eighteen speaks of the Son being in the bosom of the Father. However, careful attention to the logic and vocabulary of these verses attaches the begotten-ness or Sonship of the Son to his preincarnate state as the Logos. In verse eighteen, divine language is properly paired with sonship: “the only-begotten God (Gr. monogenēs theos), who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known.”[4] Here we have a profound statement of the Son’s eternal sonship, because his generation—or begotten-ness—can be properly predicated of his divinity, or attributed to him as God, as he possesses it in the bosom of the Father, from whom he was sent; that is, as he was in the beginning with God. This begotten-ness is not because “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” but rather is attached to his preeminent glory from the Father which he came to shine forth: “glory as of the only begotten Son from the Father” (1:14). The logical order of 1:1–18 is not that of God who becomes a son by becoming a man, but rather, one who is properly both God and Son who then becomes a man. On these grounds, the Nicene Creed of 325 was right to affirm generation as a predicate of divinity: being “Son of God” includes not just becoming a man, but, more eminently, being “begotten from the Father, only-begotten…from the substance of the Father.”
4. While a textual variant appears here in John 1:18 suggesting an alternate phrase “only begotten Son,” the reading of “only begotten God” is to be preferred because it is much better attested in the early manuscript evidence. Further, a change from “only begotten God” to “only begotten Son” rather than vice versa is more likely from the standpoint of textual criticism since “only begotten God” is a more unexpected and difficult phrase. Early scribal changes tend to borrow and harmonize material rather than insert unique material.
John 5:18–29
The other text of major help is John 5:18–29 which speaks to the third aspect of Nicene eternal generation, namely, that the Son is really distinct from the Father by the “fromness” of his eternal generation. Verse twenty-six says, “For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself.”[5] The important aspect I wish to draw out of this passage and its broader context in chapter five, and the rest of the gospel for that matter, is that what makes the Son really distinct from the Father is not what he has or what he does, but rather how he has what he has and does what he does: namely, from the Father.
5. Much of the discussion on this passage has centered around whether it speaks of the Son receiving his divine life from the Father as opposed to communicating divine life to his people. I bemoan this pointless dichotomy because the life and fellowship that Christ offers to his people through the outpouring of the Spirit (John 3:5; 4:14; 7:38; 14:16–20) is a participation in the life and fellowship of the Father and the Son through the Spirit (John 16:15; 17:20–26, cf., 1 John 14:13). As such, both realities are present: the Son receives his divine life from the Father, and so, it is fitting that he is the one by which we can receive eternal life. Much also can be said concerning the potential charge of subordinationism, but, for now, it is enough to note that this “grant” of life from the Father is possessed naturally and natively by the Son, not secondarily or derivatively. The life granted by the Father is clearly possessed by the Son “in himself” (in se).
Similar to John 1, John 5 should not be understood as speaking exclusively of incarnational realities. John 5:18 notes that Jesus’s claim to be the Son of God was, in fact, a claim to be equal with God. If this is the case, then certainly the sense of sonship here must not be a mere human sonship. If it were, then Jesus’s words wouldn’t have been considered as a blasphemous claim of equality with God. If Christ is a son strictly according to his humanity, like Adam, Israel, and David, then this would make his sonship no more constitutive of his equality with the Father than it was for those OT figures. This is an important starting point because if the language of “son-ness” and “fromness” is tied strictly to the incarnation, then there is no eternal sense of “God from God.” However, the claim of equality in 5:18 makes the claim of sonship preeminent.
Moreover, this pre-eminent sonship is tied to Jesus’s claim that he has been given life in himself from the Father, precisely because the other claims being made about what the Son has and does are tied to his pre-incarnate state in the bosom of the Father. As the Father has life in himself, so the Son has life in himself from the Father, fitting the exact same contextual pattern as how the Son does nothing on his own accord (John 5:19) because the Father shows him what he is doing (John 5:20); therefore, the Son joins in the life-giving work of the Father and also will judge on behalf of the Father from whom he gets his authority (John 5:21–22, 27). In the book of John, this language of “fromness” is rooted in Christ’s prior place and status in heaven as eternal Son. This is more explicit in places such as John 8, where some of the same issues are raised: words and judgment are given to Jesus from the Father, yet their content is explicable on the grounds that he knows where he came from and where he is going––i.e., the Father (John 8:14, 26). So, if the Son’s reception of these heavenly things is grounded in his state of being in the beginning in the bosom of the Father, then his reception of such things is not strictly incarnational. It is often overlooked that this “fromness” language in John is paired not just with sending language but with pre-existence language. John’s logic is that this pre-existent “fromness” explains why the Son was sent to do what he does and is constitutive of what he is and has as he makes the Father known. This pre-existent “fromness” appears consistently in the gospel of John when Jesus speaks of his life, work, volition, authority, teaching, words, glory, and possessions. So, the third aspect of Nicene eternal generation we learn from the gospel of John is that what makes the Son really distinct from the Father is not what he is, has, or does, but how or the manner in which he is what he is, does what he does, and has what he has: he has his life eternally and preeminently from the Father in heaven with whom has always existed in glory. The authors of the Nicene Creed were quite right, then, to pair the language of eternal “fromness” with generation, since being a Son means not just to be of the same nature as one’s Father but also to have that nature from one’s Father. Contrary to the concerns of some that language of eternal “fromness” implies that the Son lacks something that the Father has (such as aseity), the reality is that eternal “fromness” is what guarantees for the Son everything that the Father possesses. The Father and Son have shared the same self-existent life from all eternity; what distinguishes them is not their possession of this life but the manner in which they possess and share it.
Conclusion
In conclusion, then, the Nicene Creed of 325 was right to base the real distinction of the Son from the Father upon eternal generation. It was also fitting for the Nicene fathers to draw on the language of radiance and cite Hebrews 1 to confirm that eternal divine generation is indeed marked by “fromness,” captured in the language of “light from light.” And it was certainly right of them to say that the Son is “true God from true God” and “consubstantial with the Father” (Gr. homoousion) on account of the language from Hebrews 1 of Christ being the exact imprint of the Father’s nature, as well as the teaching of John that the Son is, does, and has everything from the Father. Furthermore, although the distinction between ousia and hypostaseis didn’t emerge until A.D. 381, it is essential to note that these terms are not only biblical but were also defined with technical precision to support the biblical concept that there is an eternal distinction between who the three persons are and what they are. They are distinct according to the different manner in which they share the same nature or life, and yet also are one according to that singular nature or life which they equally share. In the case of the Son, his distinction is described by the words “eternal generation” because he is the eternal Son from the Father. He is not the Father, but still, he has his life from the Father, as seen in passages like John 1 and John 5. Finally, those who fear subordinationism in Nicene theology should take comfort that statements of “fromness” are not only derived from biblical illustrations but also lend themselves to ordered equality. Outgoing beams of light proceeding from their source and delivering heat do not cease to be light. Indeed, if the sun had no rays of effulgent light, then it could not be a sun! Some have misunderstood the illustration of the sun, its rays, and its heat to suggest that all three persons somehow depend on one another, since their relation to each other is necessary. On the contrary, this illustration shows that ordered relations are not the same as metaphysical dependence because order does not always mean causal contingency. Sometimes order simply means thinking of what is really one thing according to its different aspects or manners. The being or life of God is not really three disparate acts, with the latter two being dependent upon the first. Rather, God is one singular, pure act marked by the internal order of three-fold self-relation.[6]
6. This is why the personal acts of paternity, filiation, and spiration are traditionally called “notional acts” because they differ from the singular act of God’s absolute being only according to the way we think about and mentally process who God is rather than being really three disparate things in God. God is not marked by real succession as if he is first and foremost the Father and only subsequently and derivatively the Son and the Spirit. Such would be Sabellianism.
In contrast to Nicene eternal generation, Unitarianism misses the glory of the Son’s equal divinity and thereby loses the beauty of God’s humble condescension in Christ through the incarnation. Orthodox non-eternal generation ironically misses the astonishing richness of the divine-human sonship motif from the Old Testament because it fails to notice that sonship teaches us something about the internal life of God: language describing filial love is proper to God and used by us through analogy, not vice versa. Finally, the revisionist eternal generation concept flattens the concept of Sonship to merely an account of “sameness” without offering a complementary account of distinction, as the manner of “fromness” is lost without replacement. This unbalances the doctrine of the Trinity by prioritizing an account of unity over distinction and loses a richly biblical glimpse of the inner life of God. The Nicene doctrine of eternal generation captures the beautiful way in which God has employed the motif of human-divine sonship from the Old Testament to prefigure the revelation of his own internal life and glory in the face of Jesus Christ, the one who is fully God and fully man.
