OUTLINE The name of the Son The Begotten-ness of the Son The descriptions of the Son INTRODUCTION As we are coming to grips with the confessions teaching on the Trinity, we have had to go back in time to the councils of Nicea and Constantinople. We have had to learn about Arius and Athanasius, the Cappadocian Fathers and the Pneumatomachians. We have had to learn some big words like homoousios meaning same substance. The 1689 which is the longest statement on the Trinity in the 17th century has packed all the good stuff from these early creeds into one paragraph. Last week was an overload of words and concepts as we tried to take in a large period of time and the various twists and turns in conversation as the Church articulated its biblical understanding of the Trinity against its attackers. I promised you only one more technical message so that I do not burden you so today I am going to take a look at the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son. There is a wonderful statement in the middle of paragraph 3 which remains unchanged through the WCF, the Savoy, and the 1689, ‘the Father is of none, neither begotten nor proceeding; the Son is eternally begotten of the Father; the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son.’ These relations of the persons of the Trinity we have learnt are called modes of subsistence, or eternal relations of origin. The key thing to note is that coeternality of the Son and Spirit, the coequality of the Son and Spirit, rest on the relations of begottenness or procession/spiration. Because the Son is consubstantial by virtue of eternal generation; because the Spirit is consubstantial by virtue of eternal procession, they are therefore fully God as three persons in...

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