Frankly speaking, the eternal generation of the Son as a Person would, as Reymond rightly pointed out, undermine the aseity of the Logos. If the distinction between the divine being and the Persons is so absolute that the Person has a beginning and the divine nature does not, it would imply that God is non-personal. All three Persons of the Godhead would need to be eternally self-existent, with no beginning and no end. If not, then what you have, as Reymond said, is a beginning of existence of the individual person of the Logos. That would imply Arianism. The Godhead is eternally Triune and at no single point does any one of the three Persons have a "beginning" in time or eternity. If God is eternally unchangeable, it follows that all three Persons are equal and that the Triune God is eternally three Persons in one divine being/nature. The author of the linked article has obviously not thought through his contention that the Person of the Logos had a beginning. If so, then He is not God.
The only other solution to having a Son who is not eternally existent would be Sabellian modalism, another heresy.
The only other solution to having a Son who is not eternally existent would be Sabellian modalism, another heresy.
2 comments:
It seems to me that the Calvinist Doctrine of the Trinity can be deduced from its doctrine of the Eucharist. Calvinism rejected the Gnosticism of Real Presence, and more especially the Arianism of Real Presence being divine, producing reverence of the eucharistic elements, absolutions and washings, tabernacles, reservation of sacrament, separation from the altar by a railing and receiving on the tongue rather than in an 'unclean' hand. Calvinists returned to the first century concept of the Eucharist being a communal meal to celebrate the Resurrection... that God is one substance in heaven, uncontaminated by incarnation.
Hi Hudson... I don't like to call the Lord's table a "eucharist" because that's the term the papists and tractarians use. Arianism is the heresy that said that the Son of God is not eternal but is a created being. Their view is similar to the Jehovah's Witnesses view.
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