Begotten, Not Made (4 of 4)

Ambiguity and Errors in Eunomian and Eunomian-Style Arguments

This is a continuation of a previous post. You can read Part 1 here, Part 2 here, and Part 3 here.

While the following is not technically a letter, it began as one. A dear friend and colleague expressed to me his reservations about the doctrine of eternal generation, specifically his inclination to think that the begotten-not-made distinction is philosophically indefensible. He wanted to know my thoughts on the distinction and whether I think it’s cogent. I began a reply, but that letter quickly morphed into a journal article. Hence, what I sent him was the final manuscript. The piece is now published in Religion Studies, vol. 55 (2019), pp. 503-535. As for whether my friend was persuaded, well, he's now an Orthodox convert. Please subscribe and consider supporting my work.

* NOTE: With footnotes, the article exceeded Substack word limits, requiring it to be broken into seven posts. I have thus remove the majority of footnotes and trimmed some text in order to make it more accessible for Substack readers. For those who wish to see the article in full, you can find it here.

Ambiguity and Errors in Eunomian and Eunomian-Style Arguments

With the metaphysical distinctions between EG and creation before us, we return to the Eunomian and Eunomian-style arguments identified in the above introduction. Beginning with the contemporary case of Leftow, we noted that Leftow sees only two differences between begetting and creating, namely, eternality and the moral perfection of The Begotten. Yet, Leftow considers this to be ‘an unacceptably low standard of divinity’,¹ illustrating the point via a thought experiment in which God creates from eternity a group of morally perfect angels who meet these same standards: they are causally dependent on God; they exist from eternity; they are morally perfect; and they are immaterial. While Leftow’s case may have initial plausibility, in the light of the foregoing, it proves to be a very superficial understanding of the EG-creation distinction. Leftow evidently has little grasp of the underlying metaphysics of the Eastern fathers. Thus, the EG doctrine, in Leftow’s hands, becomes painfully thin once detached from its metaphysical commitments and has little to protect it when run through the analytic machinery of contemporary philosophy of religion. Yet, as we have seen, the pro-Nicene profession of EG generally and of the EG-creation distinction specifically is not metaphysically neutral but metaphysically committed, and robustly so. When we recognize this fact, there emerges a long list of distinctions between EG and creation, contra Leftow’s claim, as well as an underlying metaphysical rationale that informs these distinctions.

The first and most important distinction between The Begotten and Leftow’s angels is also the most obvious, though it must be said: Leftow’s angels bear the nature angel, while The Begotten bears the nature God. As we saw in section 2, the very assertion that the Son is begotten entails that God the Father gives his own nature to the Son in a paternal manner. This cannot be said of angels – regardless of their moral qualities or when God makes them. God causes angels to exist by endowing them with a nature foreign to his own, a nature that is not divine. From this first and most important distinction, all subsequent distinctions flow.

Because Leftow’s angels bear the nature angel, rather than the nature God, they are creatures that are subject to the metaphysical necessities, identified in section 1, that bind all creatures. The specifics of their creation, therefore, contrasts with EG at seven points already identified in the contrast between (a)-(g) and (a′)-(g′). To avoid redundancy, I will not here reiterate these distinctions. However, it is worth noting that the metaphysical differences between God and creatures indicate that the Eastern pro-Nicenes would reject Leftow’s hypothetical angels as metaphysically impossible. For amongst the metaphysical necessities the Eastern fathers ascribe to creatures is that they are temporal (as opposed to eternal), corruptible (as opposed to incorruptible, or essentially good), and at some level material (as opposed to truly immaterial, as God alone is). Hence, Leftow’s thought experiment posits a set of hypothetical creatures the very concept of which the Eastern fathers would reject as metaphysical non-sense. The point is demonstrated by the fact that Arius himself, at later stages of the Arian dispute, sought to modify his own position by arguing that, though the Son is created, he is created immutable.² This maneuver was of no help to Arius, however, since the pro-Nicenes took Arius to be asserting a metaphysical impossibility. To wit, because creation entails becoming, the suggestion of an immutable creature suggests a contradiction, namely, a mutable entity that is not-mutable.³ Like later mediaeval realists, the pro-Nicene realist commitments led the pro-Nicenes to reject such contradictions as non-sensical fictions that are beyond the bounds of omnipotence.⁴ Hence, just as they rejected Arius’s proposal of an immutable creature, so they would reject as metaphysical fiction Leftow’s proposal of a horde of immutable, immaterial, and incorruptible angels.

Of course, the contrast between (a)-(g) and (a′)-(g′) is not the only metaphysical differences that can be noted. As we saw in section 2, EG, when combined with (e′) and (g′), point to an eternal mode of causation that, not only reflects (a′)-(g′), but entails an eternal per se causal relationship between the begetting Father and the Begotten Son, something that cannot be said of the relationship between God and any creature. Moreover, as we saw in section 3, there is a clear modal distinction between the only begotten Son and creatures, namely, that the former is modally necessary, while the latter are modally contingent. In sum, Leftow’s claim that there is little to nothing to distinguish EG from creation unravels under scrutiny.

What of the Eunomian case against EG, however? As noted at the opening of this essay, the Eunomians argue that being unoriginate is essential to divinity and place being caused, or being originate, in contradistinction to being unoriginate. Hence, by affirming causality (viz., EG) in reference to the Son, the pro-Nicenes must deny the divinity of the Son. The case breaks down as follows: