Welcome to Defenders, the teaching class of Dr. William Lane Craig.

Today, the Doctrine of the Trinity.

Part 10.

For more information and resources from Dr. Craig, go to reasonablefaith.org.

Well, as we're drawing to close our discussion of the Trinity, I have focused on a feature

of the model that I think is of some interest, and that is that the model I've offered of the

Trinity of God as a tri-personal soul does not feature, though it does not preclude the derivation of one person of the Trinity

from another. It does not include the notion of the sons being eternally begotten from the Father.

And I suggested last time that I think it's good that the model leaves this an open question

because the doctrine of the begetting of the Son from the Father in his divine as opposed to human nature

is not biblically attested and also seems to introduce an inevitable element of subordinationism into the Godhead, which would seem to make the son inferior to the Father.

Because only the Father is unbegotten who exists in a self-existent way, the son has the ground of his being

in the father and therefore has a kind of derivative existence, which to me at least seems to make

the son arguably inferior to the father.

And it's very interesting to note that the early church fathers interpreted this Aryan proof text, John 1428, the father is greater than I, not in terms of Christ's humanity, but in terms of his being generated eternally from the

Father. Athanasius, for example, affirms that the reason the Father is greater than

the Son is because only the Father is unbegotten.

Similarly, Hillary, another Church Father, says,

The Father is greater than the Son.

For manifestly, he is greater who makes another to be all that he himself is,

who imparts to the Son by the mystery of the birth, the image of his own

unbegotten nature, who begets him from himself into his own form. Now, doesn't that make

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