Eternal Generation: I often find myself thinking ahead to what subject I might next attempt to write on, and, somewhat unexpectedly, the ideas frequently arise from sermon audio messages I listen to during my drive to work. While scrolling through the main page last week, a familiar name caught my eye, a name I immediately associated with William Huntington, as it often appears on the cover of the little magazine The Sinner Saved, published by the Huntingtonian Press in England. I have a fair stack of those issues tucked away in my office and have frequently been encouraged by their pages. The message was entitled “The Seed,” delivered by Henry Sant, Pastor of Salem Strict Baptist Church: a Strict and Particular Baptist congregation in Portsmouth, England, with a history dating back to 1813, and identifying with the Gospel Standard Strict Baptists.
Yes, J.C. Philpot, William Gadsby, John Kershaw, John Warburton, the names are familiar to us all; and to many, their writings have been a source of deep comfort and spiritual edification, rich with that experimental flavor so characteristic of their ministry. Personally, I have drawn much profit over the years from their writings, those rich and deeply experimental insights into the life of faith and the gracious fruits of the gospel. Although I only listened to about 10 minutes total of the message, my ears perked at this statement in reference to a teaching known as the eternal generation of the Son of God. “Mr. Sant: Here he is, Isaiah 9:6, I assert at the beginning of this verse tonight he that goeth forth He that goeth forth, he goeth forth in the sense of his eternal generation in the Godhead, and he goeth forth, he cometh forth in the fullness of the time.” He went on to use that term “eternal generation” three additional times throughout the message.
I make no claim to superior light on such high matters, nor do I write with any desire to find fault. Yet as I heard those words spoken and spoken rather confidently by this esteemed brother in Christ, I was reminded how easily sacred truth may become entangled in speculative thought. Few subjects call for greater reverence than the mystery of Christ’s Person. Who He is in Himself, and how He is revealed to us in the scriptures: His eternal Godhead, self-existent and underived, and His manifestation to us in the flesh. The phrase “eternal generation” touches the very borders of that mystery, and if spoken of carelessly, it may obscure rather than exalt His glory. My hope, therefore, is simply to briefly weigh the expression in the light of Scripture, and to do so without respect of persons, if such a thing is possible, especially when speaking of those (Gospel Standard Baptists) whom we love in the truth and with whom we share the fellowship of Christ.
I find it interesting, and please, someone correct me if I’m wrong, that their Articles of Faith are silent on “eternal generation” as a defined doctrine. The articles nowhere employ that terminology. They set forth Christ’s eternal Deity and His true manhood with precision & clarity, &c., yet they do so without adopting the scholastic language that has been debated for centuries in trinitarian theology. Additionally, the GS Articles of Faith were not framed until 1878, after Gadsby, Philpot, Warburton, Kershaw, Tiptaft, and M’Kenzie, (the leading voices of the early movement,) had all entered their rest, which to my mind suggests that they left their articles free from such speculative terminology, expressions later generations would adopt with far less caution. Yet even so, much of the earlier devotional writing carried a tone of reverence when approaching the mystery of Christ’s Person.
It is striking that Philpot, while at points adopting this speculative trinitarian framework, still conceded that the very nature of Christ’s Sonship lay beyond human definition. Near the end of his life he confessed, “we cannot enter into the mystery of the Sonship of Christ. It is beyond all human reasoning. It is revealed, and therefore we believe it; but we must not attempt to explain it. It stands among the deepest mysteries of our most holy faith, to be received, but not to be pried into.” Letters & Sermons, 1869. Such an admission, made at the close of his pilgrimage, stands in stark contrast to the certainty with which the doctrine is often asserted today.
Before going any further, it may be helpful to briefly state what is meant by this phrase, for it is one that sounds venerable and pious, yet its meaning is not often understood. The doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son arose in the early centuries of the church, when men sought to define how the Son could be eternally distinct from, yet equal with, the Father. It teaches that the Son derives His personal subsistence from the Father by an eternal act of begetting within the Godhead, not in time, but from everlasting. However, even in its most careful expression, the language tends to imply derivation, and it is here that many, including most of the older Baptists, hesitated to follow.
If we are to speak of such things at all, we must let Scripture itself define our limits. Nowhere in the Word of God do we read of “eternal generation.” We read of the eternal Godhead, of the only-begotten Son, of the Word who was with God and was God, and of the Son sent forth in the fullness of time; but nowhere is generation spoken of as an eternal act within the divine essence. To introduce such language is to go beyond revelation, in an attempt to explain what Scripture has not revealed.
Scripture speaks with divine simplicity concerning the Person of Christ. It tells us who He is: “the Word was God,” John 1:1, “the Son of the Highest,” Luke 1:32, “God manifest in the flesh,” I Timothy 3:16, “the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His person,” Hebrews 1:3, “the image of the invisible God,” Colossians 1:15, “the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the ending, the first and the last,” Revelation 1:8,17, “Immanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us,” Matthew 1:23, “the true God, and eternal life,” I John 5:20, “upholding all things by the word of His power,” Hebrews 1:3, and “by whom all things consist,” Colossians 1:17, &c. Such declarations leave no room for speculation. They reveal His glory but never attempt to explain His being. Scripture sets CHRIST before us to be worshiped, not analyzed. John 20:28-29. The eternal God made manifest, the Word made flesh. When we have said all that Scripture allows us to say, there still remains a depth unfathomable. It is enough to rest with the apostles, who saw His glory and believed. John 1:14. Such simplicity is the beauty of revelation, yet through the ages men have found it too narrow for their curiosity and too humbling for their pride.
Through the centuries, men have not been content to rest where Scripture leaves them. Rather than worshiping where the apostles adored, they have sought to define what God has not defined, to trace order, relation, and origin within the eternal and self-existent. Thus emerged the doctrine of “eternal generation,” not as the voice of Scripture, but as the offspring of theological philosophy. Yet in all this, nothing is lost by leaving mystery to God. The glory of Christ suffers no lack because we refuse to speculate on the mode of His Sonship. Scripture leaves Him before us as the eternal, self-existent Word, coequal with the Father and the Spirit, the uncreated Creator, the brightness of the Father’s glory and the express image of His Person. To know Him thus is enough. Faith worships where reason fails, and love adores where language ends.
The supposition that the Son, in His divine essence, owes His existence to the Father does not defend His Godhead; it destroys it. It implies a time before the Son was, and a cause by which He became, a thought wholly inconsistent with self-existent Deity. Such language makes His Godhead dependent, His eternity conditional, and His equality impossible. The thought that God has begotten His own divine counterpart belongs to imagination, not to revelation, and to imply that Christ’s divine nature is derived from the Father is not to magnify His glory but to deny it. Christ is eternal, independent, and underived, “the same yesterday, and today, and forever.” Hebrews 13:8. Beyond that, we have neither need nor warrant to go. Revelation leaves us where it found us, at the feet of Christ. Luke 10:39. MPJ
Postscript: The Son is of the same eternal and self-existent essence with the Father, not generated, not derived, but the Word who was with God and was God. To divide their nature or to ascribe superiority to one above the other is to mar the unity of Deity itself; for though the Father be not the Son, nor the Son the Father, yet each alike is God over all, blessed forever.