Is the Son the Son Because the Father Sends Him?

In 2016, Owen Strachan and Gavin Peacock published The Grand Design: Male and Female He Made Them. Following Wayne Grudem and others who teach the eternal functional subordination of the Son (EFS), Strachan and Peacock wrote, "There is no Holy Trinity without the order of authority and submission." As orthodox and Reformed Christians, how are we to understand and refute EFS in light of the eternal generation of the Son? In what ways do Grudem and others wrongly tie the one to the other, and what are the implications of doing so?

This lecture sample is taken from Greystone's micro-course with Dr. Lee Irons: Eternal Generation of the Son in Scripture and Theology. This module, available to all Greystone Members, attempts to retrieve the doctrine of eternal generation for today by considering (1) its scriptural basis, (2) its development in the history of theology, and (3) its contemporary retrieval versus Eternal Functional Subordination (EFS).

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