Those who have kept up with this soteriology debate will have noticed that it contains more than one strand. There is the main thesis that monergism entails the heresy of monothelitism and modalism, there is a side bar on personhood and the Trinity, and there is an in house debate on the monergistic side over whether God has libertarian free will and the nature of the fall. You might think that this last strand would detract from the debate or even undermine my own position. And you would be wrong. If a topic is worthy of debate, then that debate must be honest. The ultimate goal, after all, is to determine the truth. It is not to defend one’s position at all costs. And so when my premises are questioned by someone who essentially takes my position in the main debate, I can only count this as a good thing. So far in that strand, I haven’t been convinced. However, in a single comment to this post, which was my latest contribution to the strand on personhood, Chris has managed to demolish the argument that I made in that post. Despite the fact that I will have to re-present my case, perhaps not as effectively as I thought I had done, I still welcome Chris’ contribution to the discussion.
The substance of my post concerned Clifton’s denial of the thesis, “It is not the case that the Son might not have existed.” I was of the opinion, and still am, that this statement implies contingency and, therefore, that the Son was a creature. My strategy was to take the opposite statement- It is the case that the Son might not have existed- and show that the perfect tense structure thereof makes no sense unless it is possible to latch on to a time when the Son actually was not. Clifton had affirmed that the Son has actually existed throughout all eternity; however, the necessity that he ascribes to the Son’s existence is an eternal necessity of the present. I agree with the concept of the necessity of the present, but I do not believe that this type of necessity necessarily implies absolute necessity; that is, it can be true of a contingent being. Extending this type of necessity into eternity does nothing to change this. I believe that anything that is not absolutely necessary, but is contingent in some other sense, cannot be anything other than a creature. It appears from Clifton’s denial of the thesis that he doesn’t agree- an eternal necessity of the present is sufficient. Rather than argue directly against this point, I attempted to take the concept of the necessity of the present, combine it with the present perfect tense of the counter-statement, and demonstrate that this could not describe an eternal being. And if not an eternal being, then a creature. Clifton’s denial of the thesis would then be shown to entail Arianism.
Chris brought up the point that, although he might not have been elected, there was no time when God hadn’t made up his mind on the matter. I may have been able to get around this one by distinguishing between what is actual and what is guaranteed. It’s the other point that was fatal. It had never occurred to me that anything contingent on the will of God could be coeternal with God. But, as I thought about it, however unlikely it was that God would ever will such a thing, I had to conclude that it was not impossible. I’m not convinced that he would be able to create an eternal creature that actually did anything. Creatures, to change or do something, must exist in time. No matter where we plot point B on this creature’s timeline, it would never be able to get there from point A, which would be an infinite distance behind it. An eternal creature would have to be absolutely changeless and motionless. Basically, if God had wanted an eternal creature, he would be stuck with something like a pet rock. Still, I can’t very well approach Clifton and claim that his position can only be true if we posit that Christ is a rock in ways far more literal than Scripture ever intended. I would have to assume my conclusion that willing something into existence entails creating it. So Chris is right, Clifton’s position does not entail Arianism.
This, however, is a technicality based on the fact that Arianism claims that the Son was not eternal. Subsequent forms of semi-Arianism don’t. I am in full agreement with Chris’ own argument against Clifton’s denial of the thesis. “Necessary existence, no less than eternity, is conceptually inseparable from divinity.” I imagine that Clifton would agree, but then claim that an eternal necessity of the present is sufficient. If so, I offer for consideration God’s pet rock. I would also like to put Chris’ statement in terms of possible worlds, to, perhaps, offer another perspective. If Clifton is correct in denying the thesis, then there is at least one possible world in which the Son does not exist. It is conceptually impossible that a divine person would not exist in all possible worlds.
Chris also writes, “Although I’m sure Clifton says ‘begotten, not made’, the word ‘begotten’ is drained of its meaning when he says, ‘begotten, but not by nature.’” I agree; however, I wonder if it may not be too soon in the overall debate to make this argument to Clifton. One of the very points in question is our conception of ‘nature.’ If only we could grasp what Clifton means by it, we would readily see the error of our own monothelitist ways.