Unique, Not Only-Begotten
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Desire to be a vessel of honor unto the Lord Jesus Christ?
Join For His Glory for a discussion on how
https://christianforums.net/threads/a-vessel-of-honor.110278/
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Taking the time to pray? Christ is the answer in times of need
https://christianforums.net/threads/psalm-70-1-save-me-o-god-lord-help-me-now.108509/
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There was no belief about Jesus being God in the New Testament. They all clearly understood Jesus was a man through whom God acted.
Acts 2
22Men of Israel, listen to this message: Jesus of Nazareth was a man certified by God to you by miracles, wonders, and signs, which God did among you through Him, as you yourselves know.
No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son (μονογενὴς υἱός), which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him. (Jn. 1:18 KJV)
He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son (μονογενὴς υἱός) of God. (Jn. 3:18 KJV)
I recall Buswell's argument about this, and the time I rejected it because it requires denying Jesus truly is the "Son" of the Father.
The proposition today's Greek scholars know Greek better than its speakers in Nicaea, is also a stretch.
I'll stick with the Orthodox Creed given at Nicaea, rather than follow those who depart from the Byzantine Text of the NT the church has used since the days of Christ. Jesus truly is the only begotten Son of the Father, believing in that Name is eternal life:
30 And truly Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book;
31 but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name. (Jn. 20:30-31 NKJ)
History recalls a debate over this issue [of the eternal generation of the Son] between two of the celebrated scholars of the nineteenth century: Moses Stuart of Andover Seminary (1780–1852) and Samuel Miller of Princeton Theological Seminary (1769–1850).2
In this debate, Miller exposed the weakness of Stuart’s denial of eternal generation by challenging Stuart’s hermeneutical, philosophical, theological, and historical approaches. Of this work, one modern writer commented:
Samuel Millers’ defense of the parallel doctrines of eternal sonship and generation of the Son is dated in language and in other ways, yet it is still compelling. It represents confessional Reformed and evangelical theological work at its best. I only wish I had found this largely ignored and forgotten book at the beginning of my research, not at the end. It is a must-read for those who would seek to understand the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son.
1 The most recent attempt at retrieval of this doctrine confirms the point. See Fred Sanders and Scott R. Swain, eds., Retrieving Eternal Generation (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2017), 20.
2 Moses Stuart, Letters on the Eternal Generation of the Son of God Addressed to the Rev. Samuel Miller (Andover, MA: Mark Newman, 1822), hereafter LEGS; and Samuel Miller, Letters on the Eternal Sonship of Christ: Addressed to the Rev. Professor Stuart, of Andover (Philadelphia, 1823), hereafter LESC. For a brief treatment of the life of Moses Stuart, see William Adams, A Discourse on the Life and Services of Professor Moses Stuart; Delivered in the City of New-York: Sabbath Evening, January 25, 1852 (New York: John F. Trow, 1852); Edwards A. Park, A Discourse Delivered at the Funeral of Professor Moses Stuart (Boston: Tappan & Whittemore, 1852). For biographical material on Miller, see Samuel Miller Jr., The Life of Samuel Miller, D. D., L.L.D., Second Professor in the Theological Seminary of the Presbyterian Church, At Princeton, New Jersey, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Claxton, Remsen & Haffelfinger, 1869).
3 Kevin Giles, The Eternal Generation of the Son: Maintaining Orthodoxy in Trinitarian Theology (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2012), 196.
Stanton, A. (2019). Samuel Miller’s (1769–1850) Theological, Historical, Biblical, and Pastoral Defense of the Eternal Generation of the Son. Westminster Theological Journal, 81(1), 141–142.
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It says the Lord appear to him, not an angel or a prophet.
YHWH sent himself, per Zech. 2:10-11.
YHWH is singular, three men are plural. YHWH isn't a man. He denied this repeatedly.
Genesis 18
2And Abraham looked up and saw three men standing nearby. When he saw them, he ran from the entrance of his tent to meet them and bowed low to the ground.
Numbers 23
19God is not a man, that He should lie,
or a son of man, that He should change His mind.
28 And Thomas answered and said to Him, "My Lord and my God!"
29 Jesus said to him, "Thomas, because you have seen Me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."
30 And truly Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book;
31 but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name. (Jn. 20:28-31 NKJ)
22 Who is a liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist who denies the Father and the Son.
23 Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father either; he who acknowledges the Son has the Father also.
24 Therefore let that abide in you which you heard from the beginning. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, you also will abide in the Son and in the Father.
25 And this is the promise that He has promised us-- eternal life. (1 Jn. 2:22-25 NKJ)
Owen on Eternal Generation
Owen explained eternal generation in terms of an eternal order among the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.3 I will summarize his treatment of the topic to three points, taking from various parts of his writings, can help show what eternal generation means.
The first point of importance is Owen’s assertion that there is no such thing as an eternal Father without an eternal Son. He wrote, “Whoever denies Christ the Son, as the Son, that is, the eternal Son of God, he loses the Father also, and the true God; he hath not God. For that God which is not the Father, and which ever was, and was not the Father, is not the true God.”4 Targeting the Socinians, who were the Unitarians of his day, the point is that if we deny that the Son is co-equal with the Father from all eternity, then we lose the deity and personhood of the Father along with the Son. An eternal Father presupposes an eternal Son. Eternal generation means that there was never a time when the Son was not God equal with the Father, without subordination. Yet full equality with the Father does not erase the eternal order of subsistence in the Trinity. The Son is of the Father by eternal generation, while the Spirit is of the Father and the Son by eternal procession. The assertion here is that he who denies the Son does not have the Father either (1 Jn. 2:23).
The second major issue is that the Son is of the Father from all eternity. Owen used widely accepted language of the Father as the fount or origin of the Trinity, or of the deity.5 Eternal generation described the sense in which the Son was God equal with the Father. Owen explained this by stating that the Son was God of the Father because the Father communicated to him “the whole entire divine nature.”6 This meant that eternal generation referred to an eternal communication of the whole divine essence from the Father to the Son. Eternal generation constitutes the personhood of the Son, because, while the divine persons are distinct in their order and personal relations to one another, personhood and essence cannot be divided in the Trinity.
...
Flowing from these eternal relations, everything God does originates with the Father, is effected by the Son, and is perfected or completed by the Spirit. God created the world through the Son as his eternal Word, and by his Spirit hovering over the face of the deep. The Father sent the Son to become man, the Son became incarnate, and the Spirit united the divine and human natures by overshadowing Mary’s womb. The Father planned salvation in love, the Son purchased salvation in grace, and the Spirit applies salvation as the bond of communion between God and redeemed humanity.13 As God saves us from the Father, through the Son, by the Spirit, so we return to God by the Spirit, through the Son, to the Father.14 Eternal generation comes into this picture because it means that the Father reveals himself, works, and saves sinners through his Son, and that we cannot come to know him apart from the Son. Including the Spirit’s work, we need a whole Trinity to save us wholly, and we need to come to God respecting the eternal order of the divine persons.
Why Owen’s Treatment of Eternal Generation is Important
Owen shows that eternal generation is vital, both for the doctrine of the Trinity, and for knowing the right God in the right way. If importance means groundbreaking ideas that shatter common conceptions, then Owen on eternal generation is relatively mundane. Eternal generation as eternal communication of deity from Father to Son was common to Lutherans, Reformed theologians, and Roman Catholics alike. All parties also affirmed that the Son was equal to the Father in divine glory without subordination. They all taught an eternal order among the persons of the Trinity as well, the Father always being the first person, the Son second, and the Spirit third in eternal intra-Trinitarian being and communion. However, if Owen’s teaching was commonplace, then it is often under-appreciated today.15 Eternal generation is a vital part of the church’s reflection on who God reveals himself to be in the Scriptures, and nothing is more important than knowing who God is.
Owen’s teaching on eternal generation has practical implications as well. Too often today the gospel has become a list of benefits rather than the work of three divine persons. Do we reduce the gospel to the forgiveness of sins and changed lives, or do we understand that the gospel aims to restore the true knowledge and worship of God? Put bluntly, is the gospel about us and what we get out of it, or is it about God and what he does to restore our relationship with him? Eternal generation becomes relevant to us, and so does the Trinity for that matter, if the goal of salvation is coming to the Father, through his Son, and by his Spirit.16
For those interested in expanding Owen’s treatment of eternal generation and the gospel, I recommend reading Communion with God or Pneumatologia. My hope is that this has whet the appetites of readers to dig deeper into eternal generation.
3 This material is summarized from Ryan M. McGraw, “A Heavenly Directory:” Trinitarian Piety, Public Worship, and a Reassessment of John Owen’s Theology, Reformed Historical Theology (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014), 52–57.
4 John Owen, The Works of John Owen, A Brief Declaration and Vindication of the Trinity and the Atonement of Christ, ed. W. H Goold (London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1965), 2:382.
5 Owen, Works, Pneumatologia, 43, 60, 94, as examples.
6 Owen, Works, Pneumatologia, 197.
7 For Owen’s defense of the procession of the Spirit from Father and Son and not from the Father alone, otherwise known as the filioque, see Owen, Works, Pneumatologia, 184–188, 191, 478.
8 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, vol. XX–XXI, Library of Christian Classics (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), 153. Book 1, chapter 3, section 25. For more detail on this thorny controversy, see Brannon Ellis, Calvin, Classical Trinitarianism, and the Aseity of the Son (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).
9 Mark Jones, Why Heaven Kissed Earth: The Christology of the Puritan Reformed Orthodox Theologian, Thomas Goodwin (1600–1680), vol. 13, Reformed Historical Theology (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2010), 116.
10 Owen’s contemporary, Edward Leigh explained: “The personal property of the Father is to beget, that is, not to multiply his substance by production, but to communicate his substance to the Sonne. The Sonne is said to be begotten, that is, to have his whole substance from the Father by communication.” Edward Leigh, A Systeme or Body of Divinity Consisting of Ten Books, Wherein the Fundamentals and Main Grounds of Religion Are Opened (London, 1654), 206.
11 Owen, Works, “The Nature and Beauty of Public Worship,” 9:58.
12 See Westminster Larger Catechism question 10.
13 Love, grace, and communion are the three terms Owen chose to characterize our fellowship with God in his book on communion with the Triune God in volume 2 of his Works.
14 This is the pattern Owen set in his two sermons on “The Nature and Beauty of Public Worship,” cited above from volume 9 of his Works, based on the Trinitarian order of Eph. 2:18.
15 For an excellent work defending eternal generation and its importance from various perspectives, see Fred Sanders and Scott R. Swain, eds., Retrieving Eternal Generation (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2017).
16 For a practical treatment of how the Trinity affects every area of Christian faith and practice, see Ryan M. McGraw, Knowing the Trinity: Practical Thoughts for Daily Life (Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, 2017).
McGraw, R. (2020). The Catholic Puritan: John Owen on Eternal Generation. Credo Magazine, 10(4).
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One of the three "men" that appeared to Abraham and Sarah, was YHWH. This is clear from verses 13, 14, 17, 19, 20, 22, where LORD in the Hebrew is YHWH. Interesting that in verse 22, an ancient Hebrew scribal tradition (tiqqune sopherim), say, that the Original reading is, "and Yahweh yet stood before Abraham", but was changed because it showed that Yahweh was "inferior" to Abraham.
In 19:24, we have One Yahweh, Who sends "sulfur and fire", from Another Person, Who is also Yahweh. Clearly Two distinct Persons Who are YHWH
"eternal generation of the Son from the Father", is a demonic HERESY, regardless of who taught or believed in it!
Anyone who believes in this UNBIBLICAL NONSENSE, cannot believe that Jesus Christ is GOD, and is therefore a Created person, which is BLASPHEMY!
They claimed the same thing about Christ, and His doing miracles.
Evidently your misunderstanding of "eternal generation" as an act of creation, has affected your ability to learn this doctrinal truth, taught by Christ Himself.
That is evident when you misrepresent eternal generation as creation. All that is well explained by the doctors of the faith, starting with Origin I believe. Athanasius carried the ball forward.
John in his gospel insists Christ is the Son of God. Anything less makes His being God's Son, a title.
John Owen has a point, if Christ is not His eternally generated Son, then neither has the Father been the Father eternally.
Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father either; he who acknowledges the Son has the Father also. (1 Jn. 2:23 NKJ)
Nicea stated the universal ("catholic") faith of Christian churches throughout the known world, they didn't propose something new.
My two cents on the subject:
Its because our LORD truly is the Son of the Father, that the Son is the Firstborn heir of all the Father created:
15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.
16 For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him.
17 And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist.
18 And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence.
19 For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell,
20 and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross. (Col. 1:15-20 NKJ)
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
2 He was in the beginning with God.
3 All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. (Jn. 1:1-3 NKJ)
14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
15 John bore witness of Him and cried out, saying, "This was He of whom I said,`He who comes after me is preferred before me, for He was before me.'"
16 And of His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace.
17 For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
18 No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.
(Jn. 1:14-18 NKJ)
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My spirit and your spirit were created by God at conception.
The Spirit of God did not need to create Himself .
He is from "everlasting"
Only God is from "everlasting".
Mic 5:2
But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting
The Spirit of God did not need to create Himself .
He is from "everlasting"
Only God is from "everlasting".
Mic 5:2
But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting
Not a JW. A JW wouldn't be arguing FOR the Orthodox Doctrine of the Holy Trinity, codified in the Nicene Creed.
Origen was an original thinker, not a rank heretic.
Origen’s Overall Legacy
While Origen was the center of controversy even during his own lifetime, Origen’s legacy has been, and still is, equally filled with controversy and polarization. Origen’s detractors—especially Jerome, who had been a great admirer of his earlier in life—focused on aspects of his speculative thought as expressed in his On First Principles. This text contained apparent teachings about the world (cosmology), soul (anthropology), and last things (eschatology) that were subsequently anathematized at the Second Council of Constantinople (AD 553; see NPNF2 14.316–20). Clark has suggested that the “Origenist controversy” of both the early fifth century and mid-sixth century AD had as its more direct focus the contemplative, mystical teachings of Evagrius Ponticus, who translated elements of Origen’s speculative thought into a system of monastic practice that became very popular (see Clark, Origenist Controversy).
In contrast, Origen had many strongly committed followers who, among his contemporaries, spoke of his charity and wisdom (see Gregory Thaumaturgus, Panegyric Addressed to Origen [ANF 6.21–50]) and who, after Origen’s time, treasured his works. These supporters responded to his detractors in two primary ways:
1. That Origen’s works had been tampered with, thus intentionally and malevolently distorting Origen’s actual thinking on select topics—a complaint Origen had made during his own life (see Rufinus, On the Corruption; Vincent of Lerins, The Commonitory 17; and Origen’s letter to friends in Alexandria copied by Rufinus, On the Corruption 7)
2. That certain objectionable elements of Origen’s thought were set forward by Origen as hypotheses and possibilities, not as convictions that he would have defended later (see Pamphilus, Apology for Origen).
The Cappadocian Fathers (Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of Nazianzus) as well as Maximus the Confessor appreciated and were influenced by Origen’s work. However, they appropriated it in a cautious, selective fashion (see Lewis, The Philocalia of Origen, a collection of excerpts from Origen’s works, created by Basil the Great and Gregory of Nazianzus).
ANF Ante-Nicene Fathers
Gohl, J. M. (2016). Origen. In J. D. Barry, D. Bomar, D. R. Brown, R. Klippenstein, D. Mangum, C. Sinclair Wolcott, L. Wentz, E. Ritzema, & W. Widder (Eds.), The Lexham Bible Dictionary. Lexham Press.
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No that's all wrong. YHWH is not a man or Jesus under any circumstances.
YHWH is the Father. Where in the OT there is a capitalized "LORD" is always a reference to YHWH, aka the Father. This proves that Jesus isn't the Father, YHWH, God, the I AM, etc.
Isaiah 63
16Yet You are our Father,
though Abraham does not know us
and Israel does not acknowledge us.
You, O LORD[YHWH], are our Father;
our Redeemer from Everlasting is Your name.
Psalm 110
1The LORD[YHWH] said to my Lord:[Jesus]
“Sit at My right hand
until I make Your enemies
a footstool for Your feet.”
Which ones?
I see it in the New Testament.
I see it in the Apostles.
I see it in the Creeds that were written by the early church to denounce heresy.
Happy New Year...
I believe in my heart God raised Jesus from the dead and that Jesus is Lord. Jesus is the Son of God and the Messiah. How about you?
Ok.
Happy new year!
You need to think out of the box, man. Jesus is God not because he said so or any Scripture said so, but all the works of miracle he performed. A man can't calm a storm, instantly heal disease or cast out demon, only God can. In John 10 Jesus didn't repeatly and relentlessly quote OT verses like you do, he let his works speak for himself.
Haapy new year. Election year, man, it's gonna be a dreadful and tumultuous year. Some believe this could be the start of the great tribulation. If you think last few years are full of chaos, you've seen nothing yet.
Think out of the box sure, but don't go too far outside the box because outside the box is also sin.
Is worshipping a human being as God rank idolatry?