Eternally begotten of the Father?

Peter Leithart quoted this on his blog:

“‘Begotten and not created’ makes exactly that distinction between two ways of being originated from God, the lack of which enabled the subordinationist glissando from God himself, who is unoriginated, to us, who are originated, through the Son, who is a bit of each.  On the contrary, we are ‘created,’ the Son is ‘begotten,’ and these are just two different things.  Nobody claimed to know exactly what ‘begotten’ meant in this connection, and yet a tremendous assertion is made: there is a way of being begun, of receiving one’s being, which is proper to Godhead itself.  To be God is not only to give being, it is also to receive being.  And there went the rest of Plato.”

Here I go again.  If no-one knows what begotten means in this connection it is a meaningless assertion, exactly like Lewis Carrol’s nonsense verse.

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe.

Then the quote informs us that the Second Person received his being from the Father, but within the Godhead.  So begotten means begotten after all.

The Fathers taught that the essence of the Second Person is unbegotten, and that it is the Personhood that is begotten.  He received his identity from the Father, but without a beginning, so that there was no time that the Second Person did not exist as such.

Where is that written again?

Why not stick to the Biblical data and assert that the Lord Jesus was the eternal Word prior to his incarnation, one God with the Father, and refrain from speculation about the unbegottenness of substance as opposed to the begetting of Person?

That way we still stick it to the Arians without opening a can of worms about subordinationism within the ontological Trinity.  Do not go beyond what is written.

Doctor Leithart says that the Lord is both originated and unoriginated, and explains this in terms of the divine person only.  My explanation satisfies me much more, but then it would, wouldn’t it?  The Lord is entirely unoriginated regarding his divinity, and entirely originated regarding his humanity.  

Simple and uncomplicated, and most of all, Biblical.

Which justification by faith alone do you mean?

The debate about justification is a delicious irony.  Those who are most voicy about being Presbyterian and Reformed, or just Reformed, like the Reformed Baptists, claim to be defending the Reformed doctrine of justification by faith alone – but they are not.

You see, there are two versions of the sola fide doctrine – one as held by the Reformers, and the other as held by the Anabaptists and modern evangelicals, and they are very different!

The original version of sola fide as taught by Martin Luther and every other Protestant leader of note links the free forgiveness of our sins to a particular way that the said forgiveness is imparted or conveyed – in baptism.  By baptism I mean baptism – you know, the sprinkling of water upon someone accompanied by the recitation of the Trinitarian formula, not some other kind of baptism that has no relation to wet water.

There can be no proper disagreement by anyone who actually reads history, the Bible, and the various Confessions.  Without handcuffing God to baptism as an inseparable means of justification, the Protestant Churches of the Reformation taught with one voice that they acknowledged one baptism for the remission of sins, and taught that those who received it worthily received at once from God both justification and the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Those who are shouting the loudest today about the need to defend justification, the pillar of the standing or falling church, people like Andrew Webb and the OPC, the PCA, and the rest of that sorry lot, have an entirely different version of it.  Being mystics, and having a deeply Baptistic mentality, they deny that Baptism has anything to with the imparting and conveying of grace.  The situation in the UK is the same, sadly.

Modern evangelicals of every stripe fall into this category, which is the reason that I no longer use that term to describe myself.

Here is the irony again: the so-called Federal Vision is not heretical at all on justification, it is their accusers and persecutors.

The Deaf, the Stupid, and the Dishonest.

I often ask myself why I bother to debate with evangelicals, especially after I have done it yet again, and against my better judgement.  It seems to me that they are irredeemably stupid, deaf, and ignorant, despite their post-graduate degrees.

My motivation for engaging these types is to show them a better way, and to show them from their own Confessions and the Bible where their view of justification and the sacraments needs modifying, for the gospel’s sake.  I usually succeed in not saying things that I will regret through anger and frustration, and I strive to be patient and courteous.  But one of my failings has been to not know when to stop trying.

Why is it that people who are supposed to be highly intelligent are blind to this article of faith in the Nicene Creed?

I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins.

I am fully aware of the political implications of actually agreeing with it, having paid the price myself, but how is it that people who do not believe it allow themselves to be ordained without declaring this exception, and, when they are made aware of its meaning when in the ministry, refuse to acknowledge it?

If anyone is an evangelical it is certain before God that he does NOT acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins.  Believing it will inevitably result in immediate loss of fellowship within one’s evangelical group, and ostracism by other evangelical ministers.  

Off to the sacerdotalist outer darkness with you!

I devoutly wish that these men and denominations would have the honestly and integrity to modify their Confessions and Standards to reflect the truth about their belief on this article.

From Edward

I had the opportunity to peruse a very interesting new book by one Dr George Ella, a Yorkshireman who has lived in Germany for the past 45 years or so, and who holds degrees from Swedish, English and German universities. He has always worshipped in Baptist churches, including in the USA for a while. His book is on The Covenant of Grace and Christian Baptism, and is a strong critique of the Baptistic understanding and practice. He told me that he was at a church in Oregon when a new minister was appointed. The man asked his congregation, ‘Who here has been not baptised by a Southern Baptist minister?’ Nearly all the congregation put up their hands. ‘You will all need to be baptised again’, he said. One lady told Dr Ella that she had already been baptised EIGHT times, and with his encouragement told the minister. On being told that a refusal to submit to his baptism would mean denial of access to the Lord’s Table she replied, ‘I have been bapstised already in obedience to my Lord Jesus. I shall be so again in obedience to you’, and she submitted. Dr Ella commented wryly that this would hold her and the rest of the congregation only until another new minister is appointed, at which it would start all over again.
I realise that to us in the UK, who perhaps know those who call themselves Covenantal Baptists, this seems hard to believe. Yet the effect of this is to show that Baptists are (or are in real danger of becoming) cults of particular ministers, perhaps of denominations, and certainly of a mode which (as Dr Ella’s book shows) is indefensible from Scripture. Baptism does indeed seem to replace justification by faith.