A More Helpful Word than “Generate?”

A while ago, I did some teaching about the doctrine of eternal generation. It’s something I teach about plenty: see this book, or this chapter, or this free article at Desiring God. As I wrapped up the lesson, a friend asked about the terminology. The exchange took place on social media, but with someone I know in real life. He’s not a trained theologian but is an active church member, and he has legal training which he uses both in practicing and teaching law. You’ll see the fine, analytic turn of his mind in the way he poses this (lightly edited) question:

Under the ordinary lay use of “generate” as I understand it (something akin to “create” or “cause to come into being”) the notion of eternal generation appears self-contradictory, as something generated must have not existed before it was generated. (This would also raise issues of the Son’s eternal nature.) Is there a better way to understand the meaning of “generation” without bringing in those connotations?

Great question. But no, that’s what the modifier “eternal” is supposed to do. This (“EG”) is one of those standard terms that can’t be understood by just analyzing the words used. You can probably think of such terms in law or econ; terms that mean what they mean because they are fixed by usage and must be said in the form demanded by their history of usage. You must say habeas corpus, tort reform, rent seeking, and so on, even at risk of speaking non-English or saying terms nobody could get at the sense of merely analytically).

I’d love to have transparent terminology for all readers, and ‘ve spent time brainstorming for alternatives. But I’ve come up empty. There’s some warrant for saying “production,” but it doesn’t solve the problem you point out. “Principling” is inherently excellent, but too recherché and maybe not a proper word.

Here’s something weird: The first listed meaning of “generate” in the OED is “to bring forth by procreation.” That is, it didn’t indicate a mechanical procedure of craftsmanship but a biological procedure of reproduction. (This distinction, between creating and begetting, is exactly what the Nicene Creed is driving at in the clause “begotten, not made.”) That use is now rare and maybe obsolete. But notice that it used to mean “have a baby.” So when a theologian said, “God the Son is begotten of the Father, or we could say he is generated,” there was no switch of metaphors or semantic domain.

This may not sound like an answer, but my strategic decision as a user of these words is that any way you talk about this doctrine will require you to clarify what you mean. Even the biblically given datum is “son.” But by son, I don’t mean (a) younger than father (b) has a divine mom (c) might have divine brothers, etc. I’m happy to talk through that way of handling the biblical givens properly. But the doctrinal heritage also includes explanatory words like begotten and generated. These have some advantages, which I could say a lot about.

My own preferred way of working is always to fall back to the Bible and then argue forward by showing how the Nicene theology rightly interprets what is given in Scripture. Another way forward is a kind of conceptual paraphrase like what you get in Thomas Aquinas. If you’re into that, here’s a little explainer of one way to approach the question you raised. But Aquinas is from the 1200s; if you want something much earlier, Gregory Nazianzus’ Five Theological Orations, circa 380 (in paperback as On God and Christ) also deals with this, and Hilary of Poitiers’s On the Trinity is also quite early and wonderfully clear. All three of these texts display influential theologians directly engaging the revealed terms in scripture.