The Eternal Generation Of the Son: What It Is and Why It Matters
Is the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son of God evidence of the Church's departure from the simplicity and straight-forwardness of the Scriptures? Does it confirm a penchant for arid, confusing, and unhelpful metaphysical and speculative argument? Can we speak of the doctrine of eternal generation as truly biblical and, even if we may, does it matter much to the Church's faith and life?
In 2004, Paul L. Gavrilyuk published a book with Oxford University Press exploring one of the most frequently misunderstood and maligned of classical Church doctrines: the impassibility of God. In his work, The Suffering of the Impassible God, Gavrilyuk recalls his readers to the impassibility doctrine of history, not of myth, and along the way reminds us how Christian theology works and, as a result, what it is. The doctrine of divine impassibility was not articulated and defended as a way of resolving apparently contradictory truths, namely, that God is unchanging and yet that God the Son suffered. No, divine impassibility was articulated to reject efforts at such resolution. Recognizing the inherently paradoxical nature of Christian theological claims, and refusing the temptation to dissolve all mysteries by proposing an exhaustively explanatory formulation, divine impassibility affirms the truths we know from Scripture concerning God and speaks faithfully about those truths while rejecting unfaithful ways of speech and of forcing resolution of apparent tensions. In other words, Christian theology does not aim at fully explaining things that are beyond our understanding—the things that belong to the Lord, as Deuteronomy says. Christian theology is an exercise in speaking receptively and humbly in order to speak faithfully of the God who has revealed himself truly and clearly, allowing that speech of God to be properly ordered by its relation to other truths as well as with a view to things we reject. That speech is especially ordered by God's revelation of himself in his gospel.
What is true of divine impassibility holds for other doctrines as well, including the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son, our topic for today's Greystone Conversations episode. Like divine impassibility, the doctrine of eternal generation has fallen on hard times. In recent decades, a significant portion of evangelical Christians, including some Reformed Christians, have assumed that this doctrine is evidence of the defiling influence of ancient Greek philosophy, or evidence of the church's departure from the simple Christian faith of the Bible and teachings of Jesus. Today's Greystone Conversations episode addresses many of these concerns as Dr. Mark A. Garcia, Greystone President and Fellow in Scripture and Theology, sits down with Dr. Charles Lee Irons.
Dr. Charles Lee Irons has written extensively on eternal generation and contributed to the book, Retrieving Eternal Generation (Zondervan Academic). He is currently writing a book on this topic, and will be teaching a Greystone Micro-Course this month on the eternal generation of the Son. For more information, and to register for this upcoming course, click here.
