Begotten, Not Made (1 of 4)
The begotten-not-made distinction in the eastern pro-Nicenes
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.
THE BEGOTTEN-NOT-MADE DISTINCTION IN THE EASTERN PRO-NICNES
by Nathan A. Jacobs
The Nicene-Constantinopolitan profession that the Son of God is begotten, not made, offers the uneasy tension that the Son is caused by God but not created by God. This claim was a central point of controversy with both the semi-Arians and the Eunomians/Anomeans in the fourth century. The latter in particular argued that being unoriginate is a central trait of divinity. Or to employ Latin terminology, they maintained that aseitas (self-existence) is an essential property of the divine essence. Building on this point, the Eunomiams argued the following:
1. All that which is begotten is caused.
2. The Son is begotten [of the Father].
3. Therefore, the Son is caused. (1 & 2)
4. All that which exists a se [in itself] is not caused.
5. Therefore, the Son is not that which exists a se. (3 & 4)
6. All that which bears the divine essence is that which exists a se.
7. Therefore, the Son is not that which bears the divine essence. (5 & 6)
For this reason, the Eunomians rejected the pro-Nicene claim that the Son is homoousios with the Father, arguing instead that the Son is of a nature different from and inferior to that of his unoriginate Father.1
Some philosophers of religion today continue to see the begotten-not-made distinction as problematic. Brian Leftow, for example, argues that it is hard to see how a Trinitarianism that ‘entails divine “begetting” can avoid the claim that God creates the Son ex nihilo’.2 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’. To illustrate why, he offers a thought experiment in which God creates a group of angels from eternity who are morally perfect by nature. According to Leftow, all that the pro-Nicenes say of the Son can be said of this angelic horde: They are causally dependent on God; they exist from all eternity; they are morally perfect; and they are even immaterial. Yet, Leftow anticipates that no-one would grant divine status to these angels. But this raises the question: If these angels do not meet the standards of divinity, why does the Nicene Son of God?
In what follows, I look at how the Eastern fathers understand the differences between the begetting of the Son and the making of creatures. I will show, contrary to both ancient and modern critics of the distinction, that the Eastern fathers identify numerous points of difference between begetting and creating, differences that show the distinction to be not only cogent but necessary within their metaphysics.3
My exposition consists of four sections. I dedicate the first three to the metaphysical differences between Eternal Generation (EG) and creation. In section 1, I look at how the Eastern fathers understand the metaphysics of becoming, the role that matter plays in this understanding, and how becoming and matter supply the metaphysical baseline for the distinction between God and creatures generally and EG and creation specifically. As we will see, this metaphysical baseline determines the Eastern apophatic claims about EG. In section 2, I look at the kataphatic claims about EG, focusing on the twin elements of eternality and begetting. We will see how these elements connect with the metaphysics of section 1 and why they must be so paired. In section 3, I look at the modal distinction between EG and creation. We will see that, while no distinction between God and creatures is required in pagan philosophy, Christianity, as articulated by the Eastern fathers, moved decidedly away from pagan modalities, adding a further distinction between EG and creation. In section 4, I return to the Eunomian and Eunomian-style cases noted above. With the metaphysics of sections 1-3 in hand, I identify the flaws in the arguments of both the Eunomians and contemporaries philosophers of like mind. In the end, I demonstrate that there are many robust and defensible differences between EG and creation in Eastern patristic thought and show why these distinctions are indispensible within Eastern pro-Nicene metaphysics.4
Becoming and the Apophatic Traits of EG
We begin by looking at the basic metaphysical divide between God and creatures articulated by the Eastern pro-Nicenes, which informs the apophatic distinctions between EG and creation. As argued in a series of recent articles, the general consensus of the Eastern Church fathers is that all creatures, including ‘immaterial’ entities, are in some sense corporeal. Not all have density or mass but all have basic materiality.5 This commitment reveals how the Eastern pro-Nicenes understand the metaphysical divide between God and creatures generally.
We see hints of this cosmic materiality in early Christian discussions of the corporeality of angels,6 the corporeality of the soul,7 and the general assertion that to be created is to be corporeal.8 Yet, the point is most clearly seen in the Arian dispute. As is well known, Arius suggested that because the Son is begotten, there was a time when the Son was not (ēn pote ote ouk ēn), namely, the time prior to the Father’s act of begetting. Athanasius argued in reply that if the Son came into being, then the Son is mutable, just like every other creature.9
Athanasius’s anti-Arian polemics make clear that he is not suggesting that all creatures happen to be mutable, even though God could make immutable creatures. Rather, Athanasius thinks it is a metaphysical necessity that every creature qua creature is mutable. His rationale is this. To be created is to come into being; to come into being is to move from non-being into being; and the movement from non-being into being is a mutation. Every creature is therefore mutable because its existence begins with mutation.10
Beneath this argument is the Eastern patristic commitment to moderate realist substance metaphysics. Realism, of course, concerns whether general nouns have any reality outside the abstraction in the mind. For example, we say this object is red and that object is red. Is the common property, red, a single something shared by both objects? Or is redness an invention of the mind as it groups things that appear similar, even though they are disconnected outside the mind? Realism takes the position that the common property is indeed real outside the mind and shared by the various objects that participate in it. In terms of the specific type of realism we find in the Eastern fathers, though we find some commonalities between their views and Plato, they tend towards the account of Aristotle when discussing created substances.11 In Aristotelian moderate realism, forms never exist independently from the subjects of which they are predicated. Form is only concretely real when manifest in matter. ‘Matter’ (hylē), in this context, does not mean atoms or particles, but what Aristotle calls prime matter (hē prōte hylē). Matter in this sense is a substratum of pure potentiality, or non-being (mē on). It has no innate properties of its own but is a blank slate of ontic potential. We might think of prime matter as analogous to a shapeless bit of fabric that receives shape when draped around a solid object. The shape received comes to the fabric from the object it drapes; though the fabric takes on this shape, the shape does not belong to the fabric per se. In the same way, prime matter may receive redness (from the form red) and again lose it; it may receive sphericality (from the form sphere) and again lose it, and so on. In short, prime matter is the receptacle of potential in which forms take up residence and become concretely real.
This moderate realist metaphysic underwrites Athanasius’s anti-Arian polemics. In the moderate realist account, every mutation is either positive (becoming) or negative (corruption). The former consists of the movement from non-being into being, while the latter is the retrograde movement from being back to non-being. Athanasius’s use of this metaphysic is reflected in that, while he speaks of man being created out of nothing (ouch on), he also refers to man’s natural state of non-being (mē einai) from which he first moved into being and to which he may retreat in corruption.12 In other words, in Athanasius we find two teachings on creation that should not be confused. The first is that God created all things, including matter, out of nothing – a teaching contrary to the pagan doctrine that God fashions or crafts the world from pre-existent material. Yet, alongside this is a second teaching, reflected in Athanasius’s use of standard Aristotelian distinction between concrete being (to on) and material potential, or non-being (mē on). To wit, all creatures, when created, receive once-foreign properties, and this reception entails a movement of those properties from non-being into being – that is, it entails the reception of form (being) in a substratum of potential (matter). And it is this second teaching that is central to Athanasius’s anti-Arian polemics.
Athanasius’s argument against Arius, in short, is that if the Son of God was not and then came to be, he is mutable. The case hinges not on the first point about creation out of nothing but on the second: If the Son is a creature that moved from non-being to being, then the Son’s existence began with a movement of material potential into actuality. Any entity that comes to be in such a manner must, therefore, be both hylomorphic – a composite of matter (hylē) and form (morphē) – and mutable, since becoming is a mutation. This reading of Athanasius is confirmed in the fact that Arius feels compelled to state in his defence that he does not believe the Son derives subsistence from matter, indicating that Arius recognizes Athanasius’s moderate realist rationale.13
Athanasius’s objection to Arius was not unique. This objection, with its underlying rationale about the metaphysical entailments of becoming, echoes in other opponents of Arius in his day, such as Alexander of Alexandria; it is reflected in the 325 Nicene Creed, specifically in its anathemas about mutability (treptos / alloiōtos); and it persists among the fathers in disputes to follow – specifically, though not exclusively, in the Cappadocians.14 In this light, it is fair to say that the view that every creature qua creature is both mutable and hylomorphic is part of the pro-Nicene profession of faith in the third and fourth centuries. And rather than this view becoming less pronounced with time, later Eastern fathers are even more explicit that, though they speak of ‘immaterial’ (aulos) creatures, such as angels, this is a statement of relative immateriality; for even these have prime matter, given their movement from non-being into being. As John of Damascus puts it, ‘in comparison with God, who alone is incorporeal, everything proves to be gross [pachu] and material [hylikon]’.15
The relevance of this metaphysic in the current context is that it identifies the most basic difference between things divine and things created: the latter is corporeal, having moved from non-being into being, while the former is not. I will refer to this commitment to creaturely corporeality as ‘Hylomorphic Creationism’ (or HC).
Once we recognize the Eastern patristic commitment to HC, we have the foundation for grasping a variety of metaphysical differences between God and creatures. Six metaphysical necessities, common to all creatures, emerge.16
1. Every creature is mutable. As explained above, in Eastern patristic realism, mutation is either positive (becoming) or negative (corruption). The former consists of the movement from non-being into being, the latter of being back to non-being. As argued against the Arians, becoming is what occurs in every act of creation. Hence, every creature is mutable because every creature begins its existence with a mutation, namely, the movement from non-being into being.
2. Every creature is a matter-form composite. This is a natural extension of the previous point. Because the Eastern fathers understand becoming to be the manifestation of form in matter, any mutable entity must bear both form (i.e., its concrete properties) and matter (i.e., the substratum that receives these properties). Therefore, creatures must be matter-form composites, or hylomorphic entities.
3. Every creature is corruptible. Corruption is the retrograde movement in which form retreats from matter. Rather than a property moving into being, corruption is the retreat from being. On the Eastern patristic account, corruptibility is just as native to creatures as mutability. Recall that prime matter has no properties of its own; it is pure potential. Therefore, no property that takes up residence in matter is essential to it. This is not to say creatures do not have essential properties – every species does. But it is to say that no properties are essential to matter. All properties are foreign properties to prime matter. For this reason, matter may always release the properties it receives. The implication is that every hylomorphic entity is corruptible. For the very material that supplies a creature with the potential to receive properties also retains its potential to release those properties. Or, as some fathers put it, anything that comes from non-being can return to non-being.
4. Every creature is temporal. Because creatures are that which come into being, their temporality is evident in two ways. First, they are subject to the before and after of their making. Second, becoming is itself a sequence of successive change, namely, the change from potential to actual.
5. Every creature is finite. The Eastern fathers assert repeatedly that creatures are finite or circumscribed (perigraptos) but God is uncircumscribed (aperigraptos). The rationale is fourfold, but only three considerations are of importance here. First, they argue the point from temporality. Creatures are circumscribed by the before of their becoming. Second, they argue the point from corporeality: matter is inherently located in space. Third, the fact that creatures bear form also indicates they are finite, since every form constitutes an abstract definition. In Aristotelian logic, this definition is the genus plus the specific difference of the species (e.g., man is a rational [specific difference] animal [genus]). In such definitions, limitations are ascribed. For a definition draws a line around the given type of thing, identifying what properties it has and what properties it has not.
6. Every creature bears a complex nature. What is meant by complex nature is that the essence is not a single form (simple) but is a combination of several forms (complex). Several reasons sit behind this claim, but for our purposes, the argument from accidents will suffice. Every creature invariably has accidental properties. This follows naturally from the necessities of creaturely finitude, temporality, and spatiality. Being located in time, the creature has an accidental temporal location: It came to be at T1 but could have come to be at T2, and it will remain self-same at T3. Likewise, being spatial, the creature has accidents of location: It came to be here, not there, and will remain self-same when moving over there. The necessity of accidents entails that the creature is complex, bearing several formal properties at any given moment.
Now, the Eastern fathers negate every one of these metaphysical necessities in reference to God. Just as mutability and corporeality are fundamental traits of all creatures, so immutability and incorporeality are fundamental traits of divinity. And just as becoming entails a host of other metaphysical necessities common to all creatures, so immutability entails its own metaphysical necessities common to all things divine.
Like Aristotle, the Eastern fathers understand mutability to point beyond itself to an immutable ground of being, and because all creatures are bound by mutability, this ground must be divine. Thus, divinity is characterized first and foremost by immutability. The immutability of things divine is rigorously argued in the Arian dispute, and the entailments of the position are numerous. First, rejection of divine becoming requires that things divine are also eternal, lest there be a time when they were not and then came into being. Second, as we saw above, becoming and corruption are flipsides of the same coin. Hence, in defending divine immutability, the Eastern fathers also defend divine incorruptibility. Third, because divine immutability is per se immutability – the divine cannot change – such immutability entails immateriality. For prime matter is the substratum that makes mutation possible; and thus, God, being immune to mutation, must be truly immaterial in the sense that the divine does not have the material potential for change. Fourth, in rejecting divine mutation, the Eastern fathers also accept divine atemporality, since they link time with successive change or mutation. Fifth, the Eastern fathers are clear that, in negating materiality and temporality, it follows that God is not circumscribed (aperigraptos), since circumscription is a property of material bodies bounded by space and time. And the insistence that God is uncircumscribed entails, sixth, divine omnipresence – since they link accidents of location with bodily finitude. All such claims also point to the conclusion that, seventh, God is eternally complete or perfect (teleios), having no shifting accidents, acquired perfections, or changing properties. Finally, divine immutability and incorruptibility entail, eighth, that God is essentially good, not having but being Good by nature, lest the divine be subject to moral accidents. In sum, divine immutability entails that God is eternal, incorruptible, immaterial, atemporal, infinite, omnipresent, and perfect.
Bringing the metaphysics of God and creatures to bear on the EG-creation distinction, it becomes clear that the distinction is not a vague negation. Instead, the distinction places one set of metaphysical necessities in contrast with a second set. The two sets look as follows. The term creation entails:
(a) God places form in matter, producing a hylomorphic entity.
(b) The hylomorphic entity exists by becoming because, by placing form in matter, God moves non-being into being.
(c) The resulting entity is mutable because it begins its existence with the mutation of non-being into being.
(d) The entity, bearing its properties contingently via their entrance into matter, is of such a kind that it may again lose its properties, or undergo corruption.
(e) The creaturely reception of properties involves before and after, thus producing a temporal entity.
(f) The entity produced, being circumscribed by time and space and bearing form, is finite in nature.
(g) The entity, bearing accidents of time and location, bears a complex nature.
EG negates every one of these points because that which is begotten of God is divine – a point presumed in this section but argued in the next. Thus, the metaphysical entailments of divinity must obtain in reference to The Begotten of God. The Eastern fathers are thus able speak clearly, albeit apophatically, about how EG differs from creation. EG entails:
(a′) EG is not the placement of form in matter, so EG is not the production of a hylomorphic entity that derives existence from matter.
(b′) EG does not involve becoming, or the movement from non-being into being.
(c′) EG is not the production of a mutable entity, as it does not involve becoming.
(d′) EG does not give the divine nature in a way that is subject to loss, or corruption.
(e′) EG is not temporal, involving neither before nor after.
(f′) EG is not the production of a finite entity, involving neither the giving of a circumscribed nature nor the production of a circumscribed entity.
(g′) EG is not bound by space or time and thus involves no temporal or spatial accidents.
The distinction is concisely summarized by Gregory of Nazianzus’s exhortation: ‘cast away your notions of flow and divisions and sections, and your conceptions of immaterial as if it were material birth, and then you may perhaps worthily conceive of the Divine Generation’.17 On an apophatic level, then, we can speak in specific terms about what EG is not. The apophatic claims are specific because the respective claims about creation and divinity are equally specific. Having established strict metaphysical dividing lines between God and creatures, as well as the rationale for the difference, the Eastern fathers have an equally clear rationale for the apophatic dividing line between creating and EG. In the next section, we will look beyond the apophatic specifics of EG to what can be said positively about the doctrine.
Continue reading the next section here.
See, e.g., Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium (PG 45:259c-69a); Aetius (1968), §§2-3.
Leftow (2004), 242.
The differences between EG and creation identified in this article can be applied to the Eternal Procession of the Holy Spirit as well. Therefore, while this article only explicitly defends the cogency of EG, it is also an implicit defence of Eternal Procession.
N.B. Although the term ‘pro-Nicene’ is typically used by scholars in a more narrow sense to distinguish those around the time of Nicea who explicitly affirm Nicea from those who explicitly oppose or denied Nicea’s orthodoxy, throughout this paper I will use the term in a broader sense. Because the Eastern Church fathers in the centuries after Nicea see their own writings and subsequent ecumenical councils as a continued exposition and defence of the Orthodox faith laid bare and defended at Nicea, I think it is appropriate to use the term ‘pro-Nicene’ as a broader identifier for Eastern Church fathers who carry the mantle of Nicea all the way through Nicea II.
Justin Martyr, Apologia secunda, 5 (PG 6:452-3); Tatian, Adversus Graecos,4; 12 (PG 6:811-14; 829-34); Theophilus of Antioch, Ad Autolycum,1.4 (PG 6.1029a); Irenaeus of Lyons, Adversus haereses,4.37.2-6 (PG 7:1100-03); Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis,2.3; 7.3; 7.7 (PG 8:941-42; 9:415-28; 9:449-72).
Irenaeus of Lyons, Adversus haereses, 2.34.1 (PG 7:834-5); Tertullian, De anima, 5,7 (PL 2:652-3, 656-7); De carne Christi,1 (PL 2:773-4); De resurrectione Carnis,17 (PL 2:816-8).
Justin Martyr, Dialogus cum Tryphone Judaeo,5-6 (PG 6:485c-91a); Tatian, Adversus Graecos,4; 12 (PG 6:811-14; 829-34); Irenaeus of Lyons, Adversus haereses, 2.34.1 (PG 7:834-5); Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis,1.11 (PG 8:749c); Tertullian, De anima,5, 7 (PL 2:652-3, 656-7); Origen of Alexandria, De principiis,2.2.2 (PG 11:187); Dionysius of Alexandria, Contra Sabellium in Eusebius of Caesarea, Praeparatio evangelica, 7.19 (PG 21.564b).
Athanasius of Alexandria, Adversus Arianos, 1.18 (PG 26:49b); Contra Gentes, 1.35 (PG 25:69a-72a); De Incarnatione contra Apollinarium, 1.3 (PG 26:1097a); De incarnatione Verbi, 3 (PG 25:99d-104c); Epistula ad Serapionem (PG 26:592b).
In addition to note 9, see Adversus Arianos, 1.5, 1.9, 1.22, 1.28, 1.35-36, 1.48, 2.34, 4.12 (PG 26:21c, 29b, 57c, 72a, 84a-8a, 112c, 220a, 481d); Epistula ad Afros episcopos, 5 (PG 26:1037b); De decretis Nicaenae synodi, 20.2 (PG 25:452a).
Since the publication of this essay, I have published a systematic treatment of Eastern patristic realism. See my essay ‘The Metaphysical Idealism of the Eastern Church Fathers’.
E.g., Athanasius of Alexandria, Oratio de incarnatione Verbi, 4 (PG 25:104c).
Arius of Alexandria, Epistula ad Eusebium Nicomediensem (PG 42:212b).
Basil of Caesarea, Epistulae, 8.2 (PG 32:249); Gregory of Nazianzus, Orationes, 2.14, 2.17, 2.28, 29.7, 34.13, 45.4-7 (PG 35:423a-424b, 425b-8a, 437a-8b; 36:81c-84a, 253a-254b, 627b-32b); Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium (PG 45:368a, 459, 793c, 812d). Basil of Caesarea’s Epistula 8 is likely that of Evagrius Ponticus. See Bousset (1923), 335-336 and Melcher (1923). Subsequent citations of this epistle will thus cite it as Evagrius’s.
John of Damascus, De fide orthodoxa, 2.3 (PG 94:868b). See also Athanasius of Alexandria, Vita et conversatione S. Antonii, 31 (PG 26:889-92); Macarius the Great, Homiliae,4.9 (PG 34:479-80); Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium (PG 45:368a; 793c; 812d); Evagrius Ponticus (1883), vol. III, Scholion 2 to Ps. 134.6; Idem (1987), Scholion 275 to Prov. 24.22; Epistulae,8.2 (PG 32:249); Symeon the New Theologian (1966), vol. CXXII, 1.5.2.
The following survey of creaturely necessities is a truncated exposition of traits fleshed out in my article ‘On the Metaphysics of God and Creatures in the Eastern Pro-Nicenes’. To avoid flooding this post with citations, I will simply point readers to that piece.
Gregory of Nazianzus, Orationes,3.7 (PG 35:524a-b).