Bavinck on the Eastern Understanding of the Trinity

“For the Eastern church the unity of the divine essence and the Trinity of persons does not arise from the divine nature as such but from the person of the Father. He is the sole originating principle (αἰτια). The three persons, according to the Orthodox, are not three relations within the one being, not the self-unfolding of the Godhead; rather it is the Father who communicates himself to the Son and the Spirit. From this it follows, however, that now the Son and the Spirit are coordinated: they both have their originating principle (αἰτια) in the Father. The Father reveals himself in both: the Son imparts the knowledge of God, the Spirit the enjoyment of God. The Son does not reveal the Father in and through the Spirit; the Spirit does not lead [believers] to the Father through the Son. The two are more or less independent of each other: they both open their own way to the Father. Thus orthodoxy and mysticism, the intellect and the will, exist dualistically side by side. And this unique relation between orthodoxy and mysticism is the hallmark of Greek piety.”

Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 2: God and Creation (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2004), 317.

Bavinck on the Generation of the Son

Notes from Herman Bavinck (1854-1921), Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 2: God and Creation (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2004).

“God’s fecundity is a beautiful theme, one that frequently recurs in the church fathers. God is no abstract, fixed, monadic, solitary substance, but a plenitude of life. It is his nature (οὐσια) to be generative (γεννητικη) and fruitful (καρπογονος). It is capable of expansion, unfolding, and communication. Those who deny this fecund productivity fail to take seriously the fact that God is an infinite fullness of blessed life. All such people have left is an abstract concept of God, or to compensate for this sterility, in pantheistic fashion they include the life of the world in the divine being.” (308-309)

The generation of the Son is (1) spiritual, not physical. 

“The most striking analogy of divine generation is thought and speech...Just as the human mind objectivizes itself in speech, so God expresses his entire being in the Logos [Christ]. But here, too, we must note the difference. Humans need many words to express their ideas. These words are sounds and therefore material, sense-related. They have no existence by themselves. But when God speaks, he totally expresses himself in the one person of the Logos, whom he also “granted to have life in himself” (John 5:26 NIV).” (109)

The generation of the Son is (2) out of the being of the Father, not out of nothing by the will of the Father.

“This is not to say, of course, that the generation is an unconscious and unwilled emanation, occurring apart from the will and power of the Father. It is not an act of antecedent decreeing will, like creation, but one that is so divinely natural to the Father that his concomitant will takes perfect delight in it.” (110)

The generation of the Son is (3) eternal. 

“For if the Son is not eternal, then of course God is not the eternal Father either. In that case he was God before he was Father...rejection of the eternal generation of the Son involves not only a failure to do justice to the deity of the Son, but also to that of the Father.. It makes him changeable, robs him of his divine nature, deprives him of the eternity of his fatherhood and leaves unexplained how God can truly and properly be called “Father” in time if the basis for calling him “Father” is not eternally present in his nature...It is not something that was completed and finished at some point in eternity, but an eternal, unchanging act of God, at once always complete and eternally ongoing. Just as it is natural for the sun to shine and for a spring to pour out water, so it is natural for the Father to generate the Son. The Father is not and never was ungenerative; he begets everlastingly...For God to beget is to speak, and his speaking is eternal.” (110)