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Is God’s being in His becoming? We might not want to say that. But we can’t avoid the question, if we want to continue the patristic project of “evangelizing metaphysics.”

For the Greeks, Jenson writes, “Being” is “what satisfies the mind’s longing for absolute assurance, for transcendence over time’s surprises.” Jenson doesn’t think that the biblical God is the kind of God to avoid time’s surprises. But put that aside: Is there any reason why Christian theology should accept a Hellenistic account of “Being” and apply it to God? Isn’t it possible that what Scripture might be called “Being” is or contains something from which Greeks would recoil, something very like what they would call “becoming”?

Yes: That’s Arius’ fear: Deity is by definition un-generated. The orthodox bite the bullet, and say the unsayable: “Begotten God.”

posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, November 17, 2009 at 8:19 am

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Theology - Trinity: Being/Becoming

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Theology - Trinity: Being/Becoming

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