Eternally Begotten?

Systematic theology often confuses me. I read things that seem to make sense, and "feel" true -- yet they sometimes have little scriptural support. Once, though, I figured out that a systematic theology is basically a "scientific model" of scripture.

Most systematic theologies take some small number of biblical principles and abstract a larger system of thought that plugs into those scriptures and seems to make them fit. We use "models" in understanding all sorts of things, but one of the dangers I've encountered in theology is that of not recognizing where the scripture ends and the model begins.

One set of doctrines in which I've been very frustrated with this phenomenon is the Trinity. Don't get me wrong, I'm a trinitarian through and through. But there are some models for understanding the Trinity that have always bothered me. "Jesus is 100% God and 100% man." What is that supposed to mean, anyway? It's a sequence of words that actually cannot mean anything (if you know what a percentage is).

I've been running into some trinitarian "models" dealing with the deity of Christ that have been gnawing at me recently. Some statements of faith talk about the "eternal begottenness" of Jesus. Or perhaps they will refer to his "eternally proceeding" from the Father. The Nicene Creed reads, "begotten of the Father before all worlds."

I recently read a whole essay on the eternal begottenness [1] of Jesus, where the primary argument was that Jesus is the Wisdom of God (1 Cor. 1:24) and Proverbs 8:24-25 says that wisdom was "brought forth" before the mountains were settled. It's argumentation like this that makes me think we've come up against a flaw in the model that others have abstracted from the biblical statements of the Trinity!

The reason this came up for me was that Jehovah's Witnesses are always arguing that the "begotten" terminology in the New Testament in reference to Jesus indicates that He had a beginning. Then, just to confuse you more, they can pull out some of these "classic" trinitarian statements (such as from the Westminster Confession and the creeds) and show you how confusing they are.

But things started to make more sense for me when I found the following passage in Hebrews 1:6 -- "And again, when he bringeth in the firstbegotten into the world, he saith, And let all the angels of God worship him." I realized that this is a reference to the incarnation. It was then that the entire heavenly host worshiped Jesus, as an infant even.

I then started checking the various "begotten" references to Jesus. In this usage, it is predominantly used by the Apostle John (four times in the Gospel of John and once in 1st John). A key verse is John 1:14, with which we should all be familiar anyway:

And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.

John, who gives us the "begotten" terminology, calls the pre-incarnate Jesus the "Word". This is His Name -- and He was beheld by John as the only begotten of the Father (in the body of Jesus Christ, the man). Further down in the same chapter is the following pair of verses (vv. 17-18):

For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.

The reason I included verse 17 is for a bit of context. Grace and truth came (past tense) by Jesus Christ, and the only begotten Son declared (past tense) the Father. Jesus is (present tense) in the bosom of the Father. I recently heard this preached for almost an hour about how "in the bosom of the Father" refers to the eternal begottenness without any scriptural cross-references. Isn't it much simpler to suppose that this means the incarnated Christ declared God to the world and then went up to be with the Father in glory?

It's my conclusion that the primary application of the begottenness of Christ is as the incarnated Christ. Jesus certainly did have a beginning -- as God, incarnated. Prior to that event, He was eternally the second member of the Godhead (Trinity). His role was that of the Word of God, and was the agency through which the worlds were created.

I found out recently that I am not the only crazy person ever to notice this -- Walter Martin in his classic "The Kingdom of the Cults" discusses the concept in his section on the Jehovah's Witnesses. He writes, "He previously existed as the eternal Word of God prior to His incarnation." No "eternal Sonship" or "eternally begotten" or "eternally proceeding" in Martin's view either.

What does it all mean? It means that if I hold too firmly to an abstracted model for understanding the Trinity, I can get into trouble when I'm witnessing to someone who wishes to attack this doctrine. If I quote the Westminster Confession and the Nicene Creed in my defense, I'm elevating it to the status of scripture. I will inevitably get into trouble. I've noticed that the Watchtower folks will just assume that I believe these documents as if they were scripture, and lead off with an attack on them right from the beginning.

Is someone a heretic for teaching that Jesus is eternally begotten? No -- it's a model. I think it's a leaky one, that falls apart under some scrutiny. Seeing "begotten" as a reference to the incarnated Christ does not change anything important (Jesus is eternally God, made the world, represented Man in the atonement, serves as the mediator and advocate, etc., in both cases). What it changes, though, might be your ability to argue about this with a unitarian -- and isn't the real Gospel ministry the main focus of deep biblical study in this life anyway?

If you disagree with me, that's fine -- but if you run into someone who says "begotten" means Jesus had a beginning, I think you can say, "Yep, when the eternal Word became a man!" And you can even give them a scripture reference for it (which sure beats using a trinitarian creed).