Ask the Pastor
The Nicene Creed states two things about the second person of the Trinity that are equally true. First, that he is “begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father.” Second, that “For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven; by the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate from the virgin Mary, and was made man.” The first statement is about the Son’s relation to the Father. The second is about the incarnation.
We hear about the second each Christmas—how the Holy Spirit came upon the Blessed Virgin Mary, how she bore God in her womb, and how he became man. But Jesus is not God’s Son because he was born of Mary; this is a relationship between the Father and the Son. Unfortunately, we do not devote a whole Sunday every year to the relation between the Father and the Son.
Yet the relation between the Father and the Son is equally important. There are some notable people who got this wrong. One is Arius, a third century British monk. He taught there was a time when the Son was not. Arius argued that if the Father is the true God, then the Son must be a subordinate being, lacking the full essence of divinity. In response, the church wrote the Nicene Creed, which defends the Biblical view that Jesus is God from God. Yes, we still recite this creed. Second is Mohammad who founded his own religion. He emphasized the strict oneness of God and firmly rejects the concept of the Trinity. He mistakes Christian teaching as saying that the Father took a partner, Mary, with whom he had a child, Jesus. Third, Mormons believe Jesus was the spirit child of the Heavenly Father and a Heavenly Mother. These are all unbiblical.
When the church speaks of Jesus as the only begotten Son of the Father, it is describing an eternal relation of origin within the divine life. The claim is not about a beginning in time, nor about biological generation, but about how the persons of the Trinity are distinguished from one another while remaining one God. Christian theology uses careful language here. The Father is unbegotten. The Son is begotten. The Spirit proceeds. These are not events but relations. They identify the persons without dividing the essence. The Father is not “before” the Son in time, nor greater in deity. Rather, the Father is Father because he eternally begets the Son, and the Son is Son because he is eternally begotten of the Father.
To say the Son is begotten is to say he is from the Father. The tradition calls this an eternal generation. The Son receives the one divine essence from the Father, yet without separation, change, or diminution. Nothing is transferred, nothing is produced, nothing begins. The divine essence is indivisible. What is communicated is not a part of God but the fullness of deity. Thus the Son is true God, not alongside the Father but with him, sharing the same being. This language protects two truths at once. First, distinction: the Father is not the Son. Their difference lies in relation of origin. Second, unity: the Son is not another God. What the Father is by nature, the Son is by nature. The Son’s begottenness marks personal identity, not inferiority or dependency as creatures experience it. The church also insists that this begetting is necessary, not voluntary. God does not decide to become Father. The Father never exists without the Son. The relation belongs to God’s eternal being. There is no state in which God is solitary. Father and Son are coeternal. The same can be said of the Holy Spirit, but this is a different relationship between the triune persons.
Scripture supplies the grammar for this confession: Psalm 2; Isaiah 9:6; Matthew 1:22; Mark 2:28; John 1:1-14; 3:16-18; 8:58; 20:28; Philippians 2:9-11; Colossians 1:19; I Timothy 3:16; 2 Peter 1:1; Hebrews 1; 1 John 5:20; Rev. 1:8, 3:14; 21:6; 22:13.
© Patrick K Welton