The Upper Register

Μονογενής in the Church Fathers: A Response to Kevin Giles, Part 1

Introduction

As the title suggests, I’m beginning a series of blog posts interacting with Kevin Giles on the topic of μονογενής, a Greek word that is used five times in the New Testament with reference to Christ (John 1:14, 18; 3:16, 18; 1 John 4:9) and has traditionally been rendered “only begotten.” Significantly, the original Creed of Nicaea (325) uses the word: “We believe … in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father, only-begotten, that is, of the essence of the Father.” The Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed (381) also uses the word, but places it in a different location. The term is also applied to the Son hundreds upon hundreds of times in the writings of the Greek-speaking church fathers. Here are the results of performing searches on the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (TLG) database on a number of ecclesiastical writers, ranked by the number of times the word occurs in their writings:

Ecclesiastical Writer	Μονογενής	Dates	TLG #
Cyril of Alexandria	981	d. 444	4090
Gregory of Nyssa	643	c. 330–395	2017
John Chrysostom	465	c. 347–407	2062
Theodoret of Cyrrhus	351	c. 393–460	4089
Didymus the Blind	346	c. 313–398	2102
Eusebius of Caesarea	340	c. 260–340	2018
Epiphanius of Salamis	304	c. 315–403	2021
Athanasius	287	c. 296–373	2035
Basil of Caesarea	281	c. 330–379	2040
Origen	126	c. 185–254	2042
Cyril of Jerusalem	89	c. 315–387	2110
Gregory Nazianzen	27	329–389	2022

Dates from the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (3^rd ed.)
TLG # = the TLG author # (an arbitrary 4-digit unique identifier for each author)
The Thesaurus Linguae Graecae is based at the University of California, Irvine, and is a database of literary Greek from Homer to the fall of Constantinople (www.tlg.uci.edu).

The current scholarly consensus is that the term, as used in extra-biblical Greek and in the New Testament, simply means “unique” or “only one of his kind,” and does not mean “only begotten.” I am currently engaged in detailed research that would suggest that this is not entirely correct. I argue that while it is used with the meaning “unique” in certain contexts, the most basic meaning is “only begotten” in extra-biblical Greek. I further believe that “only begotten” is the best rendering of the word in the five Johannine passages. Dr. Giles disagrees with me on this point, being convinced of the scholarly consensus with respect to the New Testament usage.

However, that is not the point I am engaging here. In this series of blog posts, I want to interact with his claim that “unique” is also the meaning of the term as used by the church fathers (primarily Athanasius and the Cappadocian fathers—Basil of Caesarea, Gregory Nazianzen, and Gregory of Nyssa) and in the Nicene Creed. It is one thing to say μονογενής means “unique” in the New Testament. That claim is widely accepted, and I completely understand why Dr. Giles believes it, even though I am currently engaging in scholarship to call it into question. But it is another thing to say μονογενής means “unique” in the fourth-century church fathers as well. This incredible claim demands a response.

Dr. Giles is an Anglican minister in Australia, who has written a couple of books expounding the orthodox, classical doctrine of the Trinity and critiquing “eternal functional subordination” (EFS) as advocated by men like Wayne Grudem and Bruce Ware: The Trinity and Subordinationism: The Doctrine of God and the Contemporary Gender Debate (IVP, 2002), and Jesus and the Father: Modern Evangelicals Reinvent the Doctrine of the Trinity (Zondervan, 2006). I share his discomfort with EFS or “eternal relations of authority and submission” (ERAS) in the immanent Trinity (although I don’t share his perspective that EFS is heretical). More recently, he has also written a defense of the historic belief that the Father eternally begets (or generates) the Son in a book titled The Eternal Generation of the Son: Maintaining Orthodoxy in Trinitarian Theology (IVP Academic, 2012). Chapter 8 of this more recent book includes a critique of EFS.

Where does “only begotten” come in? Well, at the 2016 Annual Meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) in San Antonio, Grudem and Ware publicly announced to a very large audience that they now affirm the eternal generation (EG) of the Son. (It isn’t too often you hear a scholar publicly say they were wrong in views they had previously published and that they’re planning to revise their books. That takes humility, courage, and integrity!) This occurred on the first day of ETS, Tuesday, November 15, 2016. There was a panel of four speakers: two opposed to EFS (Giles and Millard Erickson) and two in favor (Grudem and Ware). Grudem held up a paper I had written defending the traditional rendering of μονογενής as “only begotten” and said it played a role in changing his mind on EG. My paper is set to be published in a forthcoming multi-author book edited by Fred Sanders and Scott Swain titled Retrieving Eternal Generation (Zondervan, 2017).

Since many were inquiring about that paper, I wanted to make the substance of the argument available prior to its official publication. So I wrote a brief précis titled “Let’s Go Back to ‘Only Begotten’” (published by the Gospel Coalition on November 23, 2016). This sparked a response by Giles that he published on Scot McKnight’s Jesus Creed blog on December 13.

In response to me, Giles argues that

“the word μονογενής is not the biblical basis for the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son, and for this reason how the word μονογενής is translated into English is, as far as the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son is concerned, of little importance.”

He adds:

“In preparing to write my book, The Eternal Generation of the Son: Maintaining Orthodoxy in Trinitarian Theology, I read carefully Athanasius and the Cappadocian fathers who developed the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son in opposition to the teaching of the ‘Arians’ of various kinds. I discovered that the Nicene fathers used the word, μονογενής, to speak of the uniqueness of Jesus Christ, making the point that what made him unique above all else was that he was eternally begotten. They never appeal to this word as the basis for their doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son. The Nicene Creed of 381 reflects exactly the same thing.”

This is consistent with his book, where he stated that the Greek-speaking fathers

“do not use [μονογενής] or the texts in which it is found as textual support for the eternal generation of the Son. For them, as we would expect if modern discussions on the meaning of this word are correct, the word was understood to mean ‘unique’ or ‘only’” (The Eternal Generation of the Son, p. 81 n44).

To summarize, Giles makes a number of related claims:

• The consensus of modern New Testament scholarship is that μονογενής means “unique,” not “only begotten,” and this modern interpretation is correct not only for the New Testament but also for the Greek-speaking church fathers.
• Athanasius and the Cappadocian fathers used the word “to speak of the uniqueness of Jesus Christ,” not to affirm that he is the “only begotten” Son.
• They never appealed to this word, or to the texts in which it is found in the New Testament, to provide exegetical support for EG. Their biblical warrant for EG lay elsewhere.
• Even in the Nicene Creed, the word μονογενής means “unique,” not “only begotten.”

I disagree with each of these points. The focus of this series of blog posts is not to engage the debate over μονογενής in extra-biblical Greek or in the New Testament. My concern is with the fourth-century Greek-speaking fathers, especially Athanasius and the Cappadocian fathers. In the series of posts to follow, I will provide plenty of evidence from their writings showing that Giles is simply wrong to read the modern consensus of New Testament scholarship that μονογενής means “unique” back into the fourth century.

2014 ETS Annual Meeting in San Diego

The Evangelical Theological Society meets this week in San Diego for its Annual Meeting, November 19-21. This year's theme is "Ecclesiology." I'll be giving a paper on Wednesday at 4:30pm titled "Household Baptism in the New Testament: Assessing the Debate 50+ Years Later." For those who are interested, here is a summary of my paper.

The New Testament records three household baptisms – the household of Lydia (Acts 16:15), of the Philippian jailer (Acts 16:33), and of Stephanas (1 Cor 1:16). The number of household baptisms may be increased to six if we include three cases where a household context is implied – the baptisms of Crispus and Gaius (1 Cor 1:14; Acts 18:8) and of Cornelius (Acts 10:2; 11:13-18). In addition to the household baptisms, there are texts which speak of an adult believing (John 4:53; Acts 16:34; 18:8) or being saved (Acts 11:14; 16:31; Heb 11:7) along with their household. In 1949, Ethelbert Stauffer suggested that these texts employ what he called "the oikos formula." In 1958–1962, over the course of three monographs, Joachim Jeremias and Kurt Aland had a spirited exchange over this issue as part of a broader inquiry as to whether the early church baptized infants.

In this paper I review and assess the debate between Jeremias and Aland on the NT household baptisms, as well as the ways in which subsequent scholars have picked up their arguments in the continued polemics over infant baptism. I will argue that the debate has been sidetracked by unhelpful attempts on both sides to prove that infants were either included in or excluded from these household baptisms. It is my contention that a more helpful approach is to ask what "the oikos formula" itself implies with respect to the basis on which baptism was administered. My thesis is that the formula is rooted in the Old Testament as mediated by the Septuagint, and as such points to the Hebraic principle of household solidarity in regard to religion, that is, that the children are included in the religious community on the basis of the confession of faith of the head of the household. The New Testament's use of this formula suggests that baptism was administered in the apostolic age not only to adults on the basis of their profession of faith, but also to the children of believers on the basis of parental authority and household solidarity. 

I plan to mention Meredith G. Kline who takes the recurring use of the oikos phrase in connection with faith, conversion and baptism as terminological evidence in the New Testament of "a standard missions policy according to which the covenant community would regularly be enlarged through the accretion of household authority units" (By Oath Consigned, p. 97). The key is "the household authority principle," that is, the principle that the head of the household has authority in the sphere of religion over the household subordinates under his or her authority (I say "her" as well because of cases like Lydia who is the head of her household). 

But I'm most excited about the last part of the paper where I attempt to show that the oikos phrase ("he and his [whole] house") in the NT has a theological aura due to its origin in the Septuagint. To make this case, I appeal to the evidence that Luke’s Greek style was influenced by the Septuagint and that at times he even engaged in conscious imitation of Septuagint vocabulary, phrases, and constructions. The classic study on this subject was a pair of essays published in 1940 by the Swedish classical scholar, Albert Wifstrand, titled "Luke and Greek Classicism" and "Luke and the Septuagint."

Wifstrand argued that Luke's conscious imitations of Septuagint vocabulary and syntax gave "a certain solemn and hieratic tone to Luke’s diction, dignifying it and raising it above everyday life" and gave "his narrative an aura of sacred history." My thesis is that Luke's use of the oikos phrase is yet another one of these Septuagintisms and that this gives the phrase a theological significance, supporiting the concept of family solidarity in matters of religion.

My sense is that Baptists have more influence and that the covenantal/paedobaptist view is not well-represented at ETS. So I'm glad the organizers accepted my paper for inclusion. Should be fun!

[For those interested, English translations of Wifstrand's seminal essays may be found in Epochs and Styles: Selected Writings on the New Testament, Greek Language and Greek Culture in the Post-Classical Era (ed. Lars Rydbeck and Stanley E. Porter; translated from the Swedish Originals by Denis Searby; WUNT 179; Τübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), 17-27, 28-45. See also Loveday C. A. Alexander, "Septuaginta, Fachprosa, Imitatio: Albert Wifstrand and the Language of Luke-Acts," in Acts in Its Ancient Literary Context: A Classicist Looks at the Acts of the Apostles (LNTS 298; London: T&T Clark/Continuum, 2005), 231-53.] 

ETS Far West Region Meeting, April 8

I’ll be in Escondido tomorrow at Westminster Seminary California for the Far West Region Meeting of ETS. At 5:00pm, I will be reading a paper in which I summarize the chapter of my dissertation where I analyze the language of righteousness (and the righteousness of God) in the Old Testament.

Which reminds me — both of my mentors (Drs. Hagner and Kim) and the external reader have examined my dissertation, “ΔΙΚΑΙΟΣΥΝΗ ΘΕΟΥ: A Lexical Examination of the Covenant-Faithfulness Interpretation.” The first two passed it as superior and the third passed it as adequate. Part of the third reader's concern with my dissertation flows from the fact that, although he is a fellow critic of the New Perspective on Paul, he questions the Reformed interpretation of righteousness as a gift from God, isolated from Christ, and wishes to recover Luther’s own view of Christ himself as our righteousness, which (he argues) does not rely on the concept of imputation. Nevertheless, he had some very helpful and detailed criticisms that I will need to ponder more carefully. In any event, it is a relief to know that I have passed. So, it looks like I will be graduating this June. 

ETS Annual Meeting this week

I'll be at the ETS Annual Meeting in Atlanta this week, traveling with my friend, the Rev. Bob Bjerkaas. I'm presenting a paper on Friday afternoon. Here's the abstract:

Δικαιοσύνη Θεοῦ: A Cipher for “God’s Covenant Faithfulness”?

Advocates of the New Perspective on Paul appeal to the view that “righteousness” in biblical theology is a Verhältnisbegriff (relational concept). This is the view that “righteousness” does not mean conformity to a norm, nor is it an essentially legal concept; rather, “righteousness” denotes the fulfillment of the demands of a relationship, since the relationship itself is the norm. This relational interpretation of “righteousness” was first put forward by Hermann Cremer in 1899 and exercised a profound influence in biblical scholarship throughout the 20th century. It lies at the root of the New Perspective claim that δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ in Paul is a cipher for God’s saving faithfulness to his covenant. In this paper, I critically examine Cremer’s chief arguments for the relational interpretation. The paper summarizes the fruits of an exhaustive lexical study of tsedeq and tsedaqah in the Hebrew Bible and their translational equivalents in the Septuagint.

It should be an interesting meeting. It will be helpful to hear N. T. Wright, Frank Thielman, and Tom Schreiner speaking individually and then interacting together as a panel on Friday morning. One's understanding of a scholar's position is deepened by the combination of reading what they have published and then hearing them explain their ideas orally in person. It's even better if you get a chance to ask them questions.