Traditional Heresies Concerning the Triune God

The Truth Refuting Arianism

The early church acknowledged that the physical human notion of begetting does not fully apply to God the Father. Gregory, a fourth-century Christian teacher, argued, “Nay, I marvel that you do not venture so far as to conceive of marriages and times of pregnancy, and dangers of miscarriage, as if the Father could not have begotten at all if he had not begotten thus.” The Son’s identity as the only begotten Son of God indicates not a temporal birth, but rather the fact that the Son eternally proceeds out from God. “The Father is ever dispensing the divine essence into the Son and thereby begetting Him eternally; the Son is ever receiving and expressing that dispensing and is thus eternally begotten of the Father” (Robichaux 11). In the words of the Nicene creed, the Son is “eternally begotten… begotten not made, of one Being with the Father.” Just as a spring of flowing water is eternally begotten of a fountain and eternally proceeds from it, so the Son is eternally begotten of the Father and eternally proceeds from Him (John 4:14; Psa. 36:9).

The Lord Jesus, though eternally begotten in His divinity, was born in time in His humanity. Colossians 1:15 identifies Christ as the Firstborn of all creation. Because Christ as the Son of Man possessed a created body of blood and flesh together with the created human nature, He is undoubtedly a creature classified among the creatures in God’s creation. Yet because He simultaneously is the Son of God, He is also the Creator (Heb. 1:10) and thereby transcends creation. “As to His being God, He is the uncreated Creator, the I AM who is without beginning. But as to His being man, He is created, the Firstborn, with a beginning” (Witness Lee, Concerning, 45).

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