Eternal Generation Or Autotheos?

 Steve Hays writes…

The doctrine of Eternal Generation leads to eternal subordination.  In formulating the Trinity, two opposing errors are to be avoided: tritheism and unitarianism. Nicene subordinationism is a harmonistic device to avoid tritheism by making the Father the primary God. Standing behind the phrases God “of” God, light “of” light, and true God “of” true God is the imagery of the Father as the fons deitatis or fons trinitatis. And this is a form of modalism. It preserves monotheism by treating the Son as a secondary or second-grade divinity, and the Spirit as a tertiary or third-grade divinity. What you have is a continuity rather than identity of essence. Creedal categories of generation and procession serve the same function.

Nicene subordinationism represents a compromise position, swapping one heresy for another.


The true doctrine is that the Godhead’s hypostases are each autotheos. To contend that each person is autotheos doesn't mean the persons exist independently of each other; rather it means that one doesn't cause the other two, yet all 3 are simultaneously and eternally perichoretic. They do not represent three different points of origin. On this model, they have no causal origin, yet they aren't separate. 


Eternal generation leads to the idea that that the Father and Son are not coequal insofar as the Son is derived from the Father.  His existence is generate, not ingenerate.   He isn’t really authotheos in a manner that isn’t derivative.  The Son still owes his existence to the Father. Since his existence is derivative, and contingent on another, he's not truly a se. The ontological asymmetry is stark. 


In relation to the Incarnation, Eternal Generation leads to the idea that that the Father and Son are not coequal insofar as the Son is derived from the Father.  His existence is generate, not ingenerate.   He isn’t really authotheos in a manner that isn’t derivative.  The Son still owes his existence to the Father. Since his existence is derivative, and contingent on another, he's not truly a se. The ontological asymmetry is stark. 



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