The Word Enfleshed

Exploring the Person and Work of Christ

Oliver D. Crisp

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780801098093
• eBook ISBN: 9781493405886
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Théologie chrétienne

A Fresh Theological Account of the Person and Work of Christ

The literature on Christology is large and ever-expanding. The same is true for work on the atonement, which has blossomed in the last decade. Few studies attempt to connect the dots between these two theological topics, however. In this volume, respected theologian Oliver Crisp offers a fresh analytic-theological account of the person and work of Christ, focusing on the theme of union with God Incarnate. Along the way, he engages a range of contemporary and historic Christian thinkers and tackles a number of key issues in contemporary discussions. Wide-ranging and carefully argued, this unified account of the person and work of Christ will be of interest to scholars and students of Christian theology.

1
The Eternal Generation of the Son

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, Eternally begotten of the Father.

—Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, AD 381

Is the Second Person of the Trinity eternally begotten by the First Person? If he is, what might this mean? And what of dogmatic significance follows from such an affirmation or its denial? In this chapter, I will defend the view that the Father eternally generates the Son, which is the historic position of the Christian church. I will also show that the affirmation or denial of the doctrine has important dogmatic implications. I begin by setting out what is at stake in the doctrine. I will then offer some theological considerations in favor of the doctrine. Finally, I will consider several problems entailed in its denial, focusing on the treatment of eternal generation by the British philosophical theologian Paul Helm. I close with a brief restatement of the doctrine.

What Is at Stake in the Doctrine

The doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son provides the traditional dogmatic means by which to differentiate the First from the Second Person of the Trinity. It is the relation of origin that (so it is said) distinguishes the Second from the First Person of the Trinity as a particular subsistent relation within the Godhead. It is also a dogmatic safeguard against the error of ontologically subordinating the Son to the Father. This is not the same as the economic subordination of the Son to the Father. We will come to the economic subordination of the Son in a moment. Before doing so, let us briefly consider the question of self-differentiation in the Godhead.

The classic doctrine of divine self-differentiation, at which the creedal statements of the eternal generation of the Son take aim, is Arianism. According to the Arians, God is timeless. Yet there was a moment at which God the Son was not. In commenting on this aspect of Arian theology, Lewis Ayres writes, “Arius insists that the Father is alone God, simple and immutable. The Son is born from the Father before the creation and although we cannot describe the Son’s birth in temporal categories, we should not say that the Son is coeternal.”1 For if the Son were coeternal in an unqualified sense, he could not be said to be born of the Father, a central tenet of Arianism. This can be seen in the confession sent by Arius and his followers to Bishop Alexander of Alexandria during the fourth-century christological controversy. In it, they write:

And God, being the cause of all things, is without beginning and supremely unique [monōtatos], while the Son, timelessly [achronōs] begotten by the Father, created and established before all ages, did not exist prior to his beginning, but was timelessly begotten before all things; he alone was given existence [directly] by the Father. For he is not eternal or co-eternal or equally self-sufficient [sunagennētos] with the Father, nor does he have his being alongside the Father, [in virtue] as some say, [of] his relation with him [ta pros ti], thus postulating two self-sufficient first principles. But it is God [only], as monad and first principle of all things, who exists in this way before all things. That is why he exists before the Son [pro tou huiou]. . . . Accordingly then, since he has his existence, his glories and his life from the Father, and all things are delivered to him, it is in this sense that God is his principle and source [archē].2

In patristic formulations of Arianism, the language used can sometimes be confusing—for example, phrases like the infamous line “There was [a time] when he was not,” which might suggest temporal succession in the divine life. In which case there is a time at which there is only God the Father. Then there is a later time at which God the Father generates God the Son. Non-Arian theologians that defend a doctrine of divine temporality may well have a problem on their hands in making sense of this claim, although I shall not deal with that particular difficulty here.3 For our purposes it is important to note that the historic Arians did not think of the eternal generation of the Son in this manner, though their language is sometimes unguarded in this respect.4 Instead, as Athanasius makes clear in his reporting of Arius’s views in De Synodis, they thought that the Son is somehow timelessly eternally generated such that he is not of the same substance as the Father, but only of like substance (that is, homoiousios, not homoousios). One plausible way of understanding this Arian claim is as a causal thesis about the Son’s eternal generation. If God the Father is the eternal cause of the existence of God the Son, then the two are not of the same substance. For if the existence of God the Son is logically but not temporally consequent or dependent upon the action of God the Father, then the Father and Son have different individual essences. But this implies two different deities, not two divine persons.

At the heart of the Arian doctrine as I have characterized it is a mistake about the nature of the divine self-differentiation between the Father and the Son. The divine nature or essence is shared between the divine persons. It does not have its source in the Father, who gives it to the Son in eternally generating/causing him. Nor does the Father impart some of his essence to the Son, because, as God, he is indivisible. This must be the case, otherwise not only would the Son have his existence from the Father, he would also have his nature from the Father. But then he could not have all the attributes of deity. For not only would he be caused rather than uncaused, he would also lack aseity, being dependent upon the Father for his existence. But since aseity is a divine attribute, this is tantamount to saying the Son does not have the divine essence without qualification or modification. This is made abundantly clear in the second canon of the Fourth Lateran Council of AD 1215, which states,

For the Father begetting the Son from eternity imparted to Him His own substance, as He Himself testifies: “That which my father hath given me, is greater than all” (John 10:29). And it cannot be said that He gave to Him a part of His substance and retained a part for Himself, since the substance of the Father is indivisible, that is, absolutely simple. But neither can it be said that the Father in begetting transferred His substance to the Son, as if He gave it to the Son without retaining it for Himself, otherwise He would cease to be a substance. It is evident, therefore, that the Son in being begotten received without any diminution the substance of the Father and thus the Father and Son as well as the Holy Ghost proceeding from both are the same entity.5

In sum: if the Son is eternally caused by the Father as the Arians claimed, then his nature is derived, and he cannot have the complete complement of divine attributes because he does not exist a se (from himself, independent of other entities) but per aliud (from or by means of another).

This way of understanding the Arian account of eternal generation presumes some meaning can be given to the notion of atemporal causation. Some contemporary philosophical theologians dispute this. For instance, Richard Swinburne thinks that causation requires some temporal metric.6 On his view, to cause a thing to happen is to be logically and temporally prior to the thing that is caused.7 But according to many classical Christian theologians, this is not the case. Take St. Augustine, for instance, who in his Confessions, book 11, argues that God creates the world with time, not in time. God causes the world to be; he brings it into existence. But he does not do so at a particular moment in time, for there is no first moment in time until God creates the world with time.8 God’s action “prior” to creating the world in this context refers to something that is logically or conceptually, but not temporally, prior to creation. If God the Father eternally causes the existence of God the Son, then his existence is logically dependent on the eternal causal action of the Father. But the Son is not temporally dependent on the action of the Father on this traditional Arian way of thinking about the matter.

The orthodox declared that the Arians were mistaken, and this view won the day, being codified in the symbol of the First Ecumenical Council in AD 325 and again in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed of AD 381, according to which Christ is “begotten, not made” and “of one essence with the Father” (γεννηθέντα, οὐ ποιηθέντα, ὁμοοὐσιον τῷ Πατρί). In other words, God the Son is eternally generated by God the Father but is not eternally caused to exist by the Father. This is captured in the creed by distinction between being begotten (gennēthenta) and being made (poiēthenta). It should be clear from the context that the referent here is God the Son, not Christ’s human nature, since his human nature is made in the womb of the Virgin and has a beginning in time. What is at stake here is not the moment at which the human nature of the Son began to exist. Rather, the issue concerns the origin of the divine nature of Christ. Specifically, the issue turns on whether, in being eternally generated, God the Son is also caused by God the Father. The creed underlines the fact that the Son is not made like other creatures are made; he is not brought into being. He is of the same substance (homoousios) as the Father. But it is true to say that he is begotten—that is (on my reading of the anti-Arian animus of the pro-Nicene theologians, at least), eternally generated by the Father.

The doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son also has some dogmatic bearing on the question of the functional subordination of the Son in the economy of salvation. Typically, this is understood to be a temporary subordination accompanying Christ’s state of humiliation in the incarnation (as intimated in Phil. 2). I take this to mean God the Son is subordinate to God the Father in his human nature during his state of humiliation.9 Note that this is consistent with divine timelessness. It is the human nature of the Son that is functionally subordinate as a creat...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1. The Eternal Generation of the Son
• 2. Christ without Flesh
• 3. Incorporeality and Incarnation
• 4. The Christological Doctrine of the Image of God
• 5. Desiderata for Models of the Hypostatic Union
• 6. Compositional Christology
• 7. The Union Account of Atonement
• 8. The Spirit’s Role in Union with Christ
• 9. The Nature and Scope of Union with Christ
• Bibliography
• Index
• Back Cover