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WILLIAM LANE CRAIG: There is a doctrine that has become part of the famous Nicene Creed that says that the Son of God is begotten from the Father, not in his human nature, but in his divine nature.
CRAIG: I do not believe or confess that the Son is eternally begotten from the Father in his divine nature.
Let’s get into it!
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Bill Craig and the Nicene Creed
William Lane Craig is a well-known Protestant apologist.
Among other things, he’s known for reviving the Kalaam Cosmological Argument for God’s existence, which can be put like this:
P1. Everything that has a beginning has a cause.
P2. The universe has a beginning.
C1. Therefore, the universe has a cause.
P3. If the universe has a cause, that cause is God.
C2. Therefore, God exists.
The argument can be put other ways, too, and it has long been controversial.
Some thinkers—like St. Bonaventure —thought it works.
Other thinkers—like St. Thomas Aquinas —thought it doesn’t.
This is one subject on which I agree with Aquinas, and I’ve never been impressed with this argument—at least when the argument is defended philosophically.
I’ve been especially unimpressed with Craig’s articulation of it. In fact, I’ve even debated him on the subject.
But Craig has been very popular in Protestant circles, and he’s also had some Catholic apologists who have been big fans of his.
Recently, he published a video titled “Is the Son Eternally Begotten?”
That’s a reference to the Nicene Creed, where we say:
Nicene Creed
I believe in one God,
the Father almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all things visible and invisible.
I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the Only Begotten Son of God,
born of the Father before all ages.
If Christ is the Only Begotten Son of God and was born of the Father before all ages, then he was eternally begotten.
In his video, Craig rejects this teaching—that is, he refuses to affirm it. He says:
CRAIG: I do not believe or confess that the Son is eternally begotten from the Father in his divine nature.
But that puts him on a collision course with traditional Christianity, because we just said I believe in this doctrine, and Craig says:
CRAIG: I do not believe or confess
So Craig rejects something that Christians of all persuasions—Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant—have been confessing together since the A.D. 300s.
In fact, the Nicene Creed is the most important Christian confession of faith, so Craig cannot make the most important confession of the Christian faith with the vast majority of Christians from all groups—in all times—even though he professes to defend the Christian faith.
That’s a pretty serious thing.
The fact that Craig denies this teaching is not new. It’s been known for a long time, but many people—both Protestant and Catholic—have seemingly been unaware of this point.
Until now.
Now the fact Craig rejects the Nicene Creed as a correct expression of the Christian faith—is starting to get attention.
Because on August 14th, Bill Craig published his video criticizing the doctrine on one of his YouTube channels.
And this time, it got attention.
The Recent Controversy
A user on X called Protestia published a link to his video, along with the caption “William Lane Craig disavows the Nicene Creed” along with the quotation “I do not believe or confess that the Son is eternally begotten from the Father in his divine nature.”
It swiftly racked up more than a million views, and at the time I started working on this episode, it had 1.4 million views.
This caused many people to both take note of Craig’s denial and to begin criticizing him.
To those folks, I say, “Welcome! Glad y’all noticed that this man does not believe what Christians have historically believed about the Trinity.”
And to Craig himself, I say, Well, Bill, you asked for it. Only a man with . . . how to put it? . . . a robust sense of self-confidence would put up a short going after the Nicene Creed. That’s not a minor thing. So if you’re going to post a short video focusing attention on how you reject its teaching . . . if you’re going to go after something as fundamental as the Nicene Creed itself, well then, Bill, you’re kind of asking for it.”
Needless to say, Craig was not pleased with the pushback he got, and so he recently posted another video. It was originally called “Is ‘Eternally Begotten’ Biblical? Dr. Craig Answers the Backlash,” but he later changed the name to “Dr. Craig Responds to Heresy Accusations Over the Nicene Creed.”
In any event, let’s take a look at that.
Craig’s Response
KEVIN HARRIS: Bill, about a week ago, a clip from one of our own uploads started circulating: you talking about the Nicene Creed and the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son from the Father. We’ll get into that, so hang with us. It got picked up by Protestia, which is a Christian publication—polemical news items, controversial news items in the church, and things like that—which is north of a million views, and the responses have not been gentle. Words like “heresy,” once again, have come up more than once. So today I want to just walk straight into it and read what your critics are actually saying point by point, and let you respond.
Notice that Craig’s colleague—Kevin Harris—says that charges of heresy have been made “once again.”
HARRIS: Words like “heresy,” once again, have come up
That’s because Craig has been accused of heresy on more than one subject, which is something we’ll come back to.
But today we’re focusing mainly on the eternal generation of the Son.
Harris then plays some material from Craig’s original video to let his audience see what the controversy is about.
Eternal Sonship
But, before we get to that, we need to look at the doctrine of the eternal Sonship of Christ, so that we understand what is being discussed.
First, here we need to make a distinction, because people can get confused on this point.
The Christian faith teaches that Jesus had two nativities—one in eternity and one in time.
He was born from the Father in timeless eternity, outside of all time.
And he was also born inside time, in Bethlehem.
So he has two nativities.
Now, if a man has a nativity, it’s obvious he’s the son of someone.
If you’re a man, then when you were born—or, more properly, when you were conceived—you were the son of your father.
I’m a man—I’m Jimmy Akin—so I’m the son of my father, who was also named Jimmy, so I’m Jimmy Akin Jr.
It’s obvious that the New Testament refers to Jesus as the Son of God. This is taught in numerous passages, such as when Jesus walks on the water and the disciples confess:
Matthew 14:33
“Truly you are the Son of God.”
So Jesus is the Son of God.
The New Testament also indicates that Jesus has existed from all eternity. The first verse of John’s Gospel describes Jesus and says:
John 1:1
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
So Jesus, who here is called the Word, has existed from all eternity. He didn’t just come into existence in Bethlehem.
Now, what Craig does is try to base Christ’s sonship on just this life, on the incarnation.
In other words, even though Jesus has existed from all eternity, he’s only the Son because he was born in Bethlehem, at his earthly nativity.
If God had not chosen to redeem us through the incarnation, this would not have happened. There would have been no Son of God—no God the Son.
He may have been the Second Person of the Trinity, but not the Son of God.
Apart from the incarnation, he would have just been “Number Two.”
By contrast, the Christian faith says that he was innately the Son of God, including in eternity.
He thus has a nativity in eternity as well as time.
Nicene Creed
I believe in one God,
the Father almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all things visible and invisible.
I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the Only Begotten Son of God,
born of the Father before all ages.
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father;
through him all things were made.
That’s why the Nicene Creed says Jesus Christ is the Only Begotten Son of God who was born of the Father before all ages.
The same teaching is expressed in the triplet that follows, where we say that Christ is
God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God.
These are biblical expressions and images that convey the idea of the Son’s relationship to the Father.
The Father is God, so the Son is also God. He is God from God.
The Father is light. As 1 John 1:5 says:
1 John 1:5
This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.
And since the Father is light, so is the Son.
As Jesus says in John 8:12,
John 8:12
I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.
So Jesus is Light from Light.
The Father is true God, and so is the Son. He is true God from true God.
Notice that in each of these expressions, the preposition from is used. That signifies that the Son comes from the Father, and so it’s a reference to the eternal sonship of Christ.
Sons come from their fathers, so God the Son comes from God the Father.
This does not mean that the Son is a creature—a created being. There’s a difference between how a father begets a son and how he makes an object, like a potter might make a jar out of clay.
A father who is a potter may be responsible for both of them, but a son comes from his father in a different way than a clay jar does.
That’s why the Creed says that Jesus was born of the Father, and it’s why it says he was begotten, not made.
So Jesus is not a creature, not a created being.
What does it mean for Jesus to be begotten but not made? In part, this is a mystery—which is not surprising because we’re dealing with God, and he is infinitely above us.
However, we can discern at least part of the mystery, and it means that the person of the Son is in a mysterious way from the person of the Father.
But they’re still fully equal. That’s part of what the Creed means when it says Jesus is consubstantial with the Father—that the Son has the very same divine substance as the Father, so the two persons are fully equal.
Now, at this point, I’m going to quote from the Catechism of the Catholic Church to illustrate what this means, but this is not something that Christians of different confessions are divided upon.
Historically, Christians have agreed on these points.
For Catholics, the Catechism is authoritative, and for other Christians it is a witness to what Christians have always believed on this subject.
Consubstantial is a word that means, among other things, that the Son is fully equal to the Father. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states:
Catechism of the Catholic Church 262
The Incarnation of God’s Son reveals that God is the eternal Father and that the Son is consubstantial with the Father, which means that, in the Father and with the Father, the Son is one and the same God.
So there is only one God.
The fact that the Son—like the Holy Spirit—is fully equal to the Father means that everything the Father has, the Son has also.
As the Catechism states:
Catechism of the Catholic Church 246
And, since the Father has through generation given to the only-begotten Son everything that belongs to the Father, except being Father, the Son has also eternally from the Father, from whom he is eternally born, that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son.
So the Father, the Son, and the Spirit have the same nature—they are consubstantial—so they all share the same attributes.
Since the Father is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent—he is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good—and so are the Son and the Spirit.
What’s different is the relationships between the three persons. That’s why the Catechism says the Father gave the Son everything that belongs to him except being the Father.
So the rule is: All three persons share the same divine attributes. What makes them distinct is the relationships between them.
And because God is the Creator of all things, that’s true of both the Father and the Son, which is why the Creed says that through him all things were made.
That’s another way of hammering home that Jesus is not a created being.
And—lest anybody be confused about this point—when the First Council of Nicaea wrote its creed in A.D. 325, they added an anathema, which said:
First Council of Nicaea
However, those who say: “There was a time when he was not” and “Before he was born he was not” and that he was made from nothing or who say that the Son of God may be of a different hypostasis or essence, or may be created or subject to change and alteration, [such persons] the Catholic Church anathematizes.
So, got that? The eternal Sonship of Christ means that it would be false to say that there was a time when Jesus was not or that before he was born he was not.
Jesus has always existed. There was never a time before he existed. That’s what it means to say that he was born of the Father before all ages and the Word was in the beginning.
The same thing is true of the Holy Spirit. He also is not a created being.
One way of expressing that is by referring to God’s attribute of Aseity, which means that God is From himself. He is not dependent on anything else. As the Catechism states:
Catechism of the Catholic Church 213
The revelation of the ineffable name “I Am who Am” contains then the truth that God alone IS. The Greek Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, and following it the Church’s Tradition, understood the divine name in this sense: God is the fullness of Being and of every perfection, without origin and without end. All creatures receive all that they are and have from him; but he alone is his very being, and he is of himself everything that he is.
So God doesn’t come from anywhere or anything. And all three persons of the Trinity have aseity. Neither the Father, the Son, nor the Holy Spirit are created beings.
However, this does not mean that they don’t have relationships between them or that one does not come from another.
According to the Creed, the Son does come from the Father, and the Holy Spirit comes from the Father and the Son by procession.
So the Father is unique in that he doesn’t come from any other person, and there is a name for that property.
That word is Innascibility. It comes from Latin roots that mean Not able to be born/generated. So you could translate it as Ungenerability.
This property pertains only to the relationships between the persons, so it is different than their aseity.
None of the three persons are created beings; they all possess the one divine nature, so they all have aseity.
But only the Father does not come from a person, so he alone has innascibility.
Whew! And—with all that as background—let’s get back to Craig’s video and the clip they play.
“Only” or “Only-Begotten”?
CRAIG: There is a doctrine that has become a part of the famous Nicene Creed that says that the Son of God is begotten from the Father, not in his human nature, but in his divine nature—that somehow from eternity past, even prior to the incarnation and his virginal conception, the Son of God is begotten from God the Father in his divinity. New Testament scholars seem to have reached something of a consensus that this is not a doctrine to be found in the New Testament.
Okay, now that’s false. New Testament scholars have not reached a consensus that Christ’s eternal sonship—the idea of his begetting by the Father before the incarnation—is not implied in the New Testament.
Of course, Craig includes the qualifier “something of a”
CRAIG: something of a consensus
But he conveys the impression that New Testament scholars are generally agreed that the New Testament doesn’t contain this teaching.
There is something of a consensus that one particular word doesn’t teach it—at least in the way that it was often taken historically.
That word is found in John 1:14, which says:
John 1:14 (KJV)
And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.
The point at issue is where the verse says that the Word is the only-begotten of the Father. The word for only in Greek is Monogenés, and historically, many people translated this term Only-begotten.
On that translation, many people appealed to this word as saying that Christ was begotten by the Father as the Word—in the beginning—thus implying the eternal Sonship of Christ.
However, in the 20th century, many scholars came to believe that Monogenés does not mean ≠ Only-begotten. Instead, it means Only, unique.
Thus many modern translations—like the English Standard Version—render the passage
John 1:14 (ESV)
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
As a result of that shift in the 20th century, there has been something of a consensus about how monogenés should be translated, though that may be changing.
There are some scholars that have argued that the 20th century shift was mistaken, and we should translate John 1:14 as saying that Christ is not just God’s only Son but his only-begotten Son.
We don’t need to settle that question, though, because the eternal Sonship of Christ does not rest on this one verse.
It’s implied elsewhere in the New Testament.
But Craig is simply misleading people by conveying the impression that New Testament scholars have concluded that the doctrine is not taught in the New Testament.
Anyway, that’s the background when Craig says:
CRAIG: When John talks about Christ as the only begotten Son of God, he’s not talking about him being begotten in his divine nature. Certainly Christ is begotten in his human nature in being born of Mary. But I don’t think you’re going to find very good proof texts in the New Testament that Christ was eternally begotten in his divine nature.
Yeah, well. Craig doesn’t look at any of those other texts in the New Testament in the clip, so we’ll come back to that.
CRAIG: Rather, the origin of this doctrine stems from what is called Logos Christology. This is the Christology, or doctrine of Christ, that was enunciated by the early Greek apologists—people like Athenagoras, Tatian, and Justin Martyr in the late second century after Christ.
So the Gospel of John uses the Greek term Logos—which means Word, reason—to refer to the Son.
And there were early Christian thinkers who reflected on this term in what is called logos Christology, or the doctrine of Christ understood in terms of the concept of God’s logos or word.
Three of them were Justin Martyr (c. 100-165), Tatian (c. 120-post 172), and Athenagoras (fl. c. 176-180).
You could call Tatian and Athenagoras late second century, but not Justin Martyr. He died in 165 and did his principal writing in the mid-second century.
Anyway, according to Craig:
CRAIG: From the Gospel of John’s description of the Logos, who in the beginning was with God and was God, they imagined that initially there was just God the Father, and that somehow the mind of the Father proceeded and came forth from him as a second person. And this was then the Son of God who became incarnate in Christ. So the idea was that the second person of the Trinity proceeds out of, or emanates out of, the first person of the Trinity, the Father. And this Logos Christology became extremely influential in the early church, and it eventually gets ecclesiastical status as authoritative in the Nicene Creed and then the Council of Chalcedon later on.
Much of what Craig says here is an accurate description of what these second century thinkers taught.
They did understand that God’s reason or word came from him, which is an intellectual or verbal image of the Son coming forth from the Father.
However, Craig is on problematic ground when he says that they thought that initially there was just God the Father.
CRAIG: initially there was just God the Father
That implies that there was a time when the Word had not yet come forth from God, and it’s debatable whether that was held by these authors.
I mean, if Jesus is the logos or reason of God, a man always has his mind, so his reason is always with him, so John is not imagining a time when God didn’t have a mind or reason. The Logos has always existed.
Thus, Athenagoras says:
A Plea for the Christians 10
Now if, in your exceeding great sagacity, you wish to investigate what is meant by the Son, I will tell you in brief: He is the First-begotten of the Father. He did not indeed come to be, for God was from the beginning, being eternal mind, and had His Word within Himself, being from eternity possessed of a Word.
So Athenagoras says that the Son . . . did not . . . come to be, because God is an eternal mind and had his Word within himself and so possessed the Word . . . from eternity..
So—for Athenagoras—there never was a time when God did not have the Word, and later councils used even more precise language.
But it doesn’t really matter what these second century authors thought, because they are just individual writers.
What’s important for the Christian faith is the Nicene Creed, and it’s explicit that there was never a time when Jesus didn’t exist.
As the Creed says, he was born of the Father before all ages, and the Council specifically rejected the views of those who would say “There was a time when he was not” and “Before he was born he was not.”
Craig’s Skepticism
CRAIG: I am skeptical of this doctrine. I don’t want to deny outright a doctrine that has such a strong ecclesiastical tradition. But I refrain from affirming it. I do not confess it. So my attitude toward this doctrine would be much like my attitude toward the question of whether there is gold on Mars. I don’t believe that there’s gold on Mars. But I don’t disbelieve that there’s gold on Mars either. I just don’t have a belief in that regard.
So what this tells us is that Bill Craig is not an expert in planetary science, if he doesn’t believe there is gold on Mars.
CRAIG: I don’t believe that there’s gold on Mars
Because Mars formed from the same cloud of molecules—the same protoplanetary disc—that Earth did, and since we have gold on Earth, there’s also gold on Mars.
In fact, we have meteorites from Mars that contain elemental gold.
But what’s important here is that Bill refuses to affirm the eternal sonship of Christ.
CRAIG: I refrain from affirming it. I do not confess it
He thus suspends judgment on this teaching, which will be important, so remember it.
This builds up to the statement where he refuses to confess the Nicene Creed with other Christians.
CRAIG: I do not believe or confess that the Son is eternally begotten from the Father in his divine nature.
Okay, bold words. You’re rejecting the Nicene Creed as it is written. You cannot say it.
So you can expect pushback from those who do say it.
However, he does think that the rest of the Nicene Creed is correct:
CRAIG: I’m not claiming that the rest of the Nicene Creed should not be believed. Quite the contrary; in fact, I think it should be.
Craig’s Justification
Now here is Craig’s justification for his position.
CRAIG: As a Protestant, I regard Scripture alone as infallible and authoritative. And therefore, if some creedal statement lacks biblical warrant, then I don’t think we’re obligated to believe it.
So here Craig says he believes in Sola Scriptura, which is the idea that doctrine should be formed By Scripture alone.
That’s standard in the Protestant community, and here Craig is applying it to the Nicene Creed, which is what Protestants typically do.
They believe that the entirety of the Nicene Creed has Scriptural warrant, and that’s the point on which Craig disagrees.
Now Craig is going to do something that’s interesting from a rhetorical point of view.
He’s already identified himself with the Protestant community by describing himself
CRAIG: As a Protestant
And now he’s going to affiliate himself with a respected Protestant leader.
CRAIG: I came across this wonderful quotation from Martin Luther in his essay The Babylonian Captivity of the Church. Luther is speaking here of the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, that the bread and the wine in the Lord’s Supper literally turn into the flesh and blood of Christ. And Luther was skeptical of the doctrine of transubstantiation, and he writes, “I reached this conclusion because I saw that the opinions of the Thomists, whether approved by pope or by council, remain only opinions and would not become articles of faith even if an angel from heaven were to decree otherwise. For what is asserted without the Scriptures or proven revelation may be held as an opinion, but need not be believed.” And that’s exactly the position that I have enunciated.
What Bill doesn’t mention is that Luther believed that the body and blood of Christ really are present in the Eucharist. He believed in the Real Presence of Christ. He just believed that bread and wine are also present.
It wouldn’t help Bill to mention that here, though, so—having sought to establish his Protestant bona fides—he pivots to ranting about the Catholic Church and its teachings.
CRAIG: You see, the Roman Catholic Church has on its own authority added all sorts of doctrines that are not to be found in the Scriptures. For example, in the doctrine of God, they’ve added the doctrine that God is impassible and simple. In the doctrine of Christ, they’ve added that the Son derives existence from the Father. In the doctrine of man, they’ve added that the guilt of Adam’s sin is imputed to every one of his descendants, so that you are guilty for the sin that Adam committed. In the doctrine of salvation, they’ve added the doctrine that by God’s grace we are enabled to perform good works, which in turn merit salvation. In the doctrine of the church, they’ve added that the Bishop of Rome is the head of the visible church, that the Virgin Mary was conceived without original sin and ascended into heaven. In the doctrine of the last things, they’ve added that Christians whose sins have been completely expunged by the atoning death of Christ and forgiven by God will nevertheless be punished for those sins in purgatory after death.
So here, Craig gives us a rapid-fire list of common anti-Catholic claims and—as usually—he’s wrong in what he says about a bunch of them. They’re framed in a way to make the Catholic Church and its teaching look bad.
I could go through them and explain what is wrong about the things he claims, but that would be a whole other video, so we won’t do that today.
The interesting thing is the rhetorical strategy Craig is using. He is thinking of his audience as composed of Protestants, and so rather than being ecumenical, he seeks to identify himself with Protestantism—“Protestantism, Martin Luther, me, me me”—while ragging on the Catholic Church—“Catholicism, bad, bad bad.”
He’s hoping that this will give him heat shield from his Protestant audience while simultaneously undermining Christ’s eternal Sonship by identifying it with Catholic teachings that he’s counting on his Protestant audience to reject—even though Protestant theologians actually accept many of the things he says about God, like:
CRAIG: the doctrine that God is impassible and simple.
And—even though the Catholic Church actually denies what he says next, and many Protestant do accept it—that
CRAIG: the guilt of Adam’s sin is imputed to every one of his descendants, so that you are guilty for the sin that Adam committed
But let’s set aside the tribal chest-thumping that Craig engages in and get on the with the video.
Heresy
Well, maybe we’ll let Craig do a little bit more tribal chest thumping.
CRAIG: I want to quote again from Luther on transubstantiation. He wrote, “Therefore I permit every one to hold either of these opinions as he or she chooses. My one concern at present is to remove all scruples of conscience, so that they need not fear being called heretics if they believe that real bread and real wine are present on the altar, and that everyone may feel at liberty to ponder, hold, and believe either one view or the other without endangering one’s salvation.” Without scriptural warrant for these doctrines, one is not a heretic for not assenting to these doctrines.
And that’s the magic word: Heresy.
That’s what’s really touching off this response, because you’ll recall that
HARRIS: Words like “heresy,” once again, have come up more than once.
Craig—understandably—doesn’t want to get a reputation as being a heretic, so that’s what’s motivating this.
But . . . is he a heretic?
Unfortunately, there is no agreed-upon definition of heresy in the Protestant community, so everybody is able to define it however they want.
They can call whatever they want a heresy, and they can deny that whatever they want is a heresy.
That’s why Craig can say:
CRAIG: Without scriptural warrant for these doctrines, one is not a heretic for not assenting to these doctrines.
Naturally, Craig is defining the terms so that he himself doesn’t count as a heretic, but that tells us nothing because of the absence of an agreed-upon definition.
And—unlike the Protestant community—the Catholic Church does have a definition for heresy. It’s found in the Code of Canon Law, which defines heresy by saying:
Code of Canon Law 751
Heresy is the obstinate denial or obstinate doubt after the reception of baptism of some truth which is to be believed by divine and Catholic faith.
So . . . does Craig fit this definition?
Well, let’s go through this a piece at a time.
The first thing we need to consider is the meaning of some truth which is to be believed by divine and Catholic faith.
This is a term of art in Catholic scholarship, and—as I explain in my book Teaching With Authority —it’s another way of saying a dogma.
A Dogma is a truth that has been Infallibly defined as divinely revealed.
Dogmas include everything in the creed, so when the Nicene Creed says Jesus is born of the Father before all ages, that’s a dogma, so denying the eternal Sonship of Christ counts for heresy.
Heresy must also be after the reception of baptism. Well, Bill Craig is baptized—I checked—so he can’t get out of a heresy accusation on those grounds.
Heresy can involve the outright denial of a dogma, and Bill says he doesn’t do that.
CRAIG: I don’t want to deny outright a doctrine that has such a strong ecclesiastical tradition.
But heresy can also involve the doubt of a dogma—and here the Code is not talking about emotional doubt or a feeling of uncertainty.
It’s referring to volitional doubt—where you deliberately suspend your judgment and refuse to make a judgment on the topic.
That is exactly what Bill does.
CRAIG: I am skeptical of this doctrine.
CRAIG: I refrain from affirming it. I do not confess it.
CRAIG: I just don’t have a belief in that regard.
So Bill does doubt the dogma in question, and he is doing so after baptism.
But there’s still one more criterion for heresy, and that’s obstinacy. The Code says that heresy involves the obstinate denial or the obstinate doubt of a dogma.
So the question of whether Craig is a heretic comes down to how obstinate he is.
How obstinate is he?
Well, he’s certainly been told that he’s mistaken on this point, but just because you’ve been told something doesn’t mean that you’re being obstinate.
This is why—ecclesiastically—most people from the Protestant community are classified as separated brethren instead of heretics.
A Protestant may have heard Catholic teaching on some point, but they’ve never understood the basis for that teaching. They grew up in a community that taught something else, and they’ve never examined the case closely, so they’re understood to be in good faith rather than being an obstinate doubter or denier.
That would get Bill Craig off the charge of heresy for most of the Protestant things he believes, but this one is different.
It’s not like Bill grew up in a community that denies the eternal Sonship of Christ. Protestants accept that teaching, and there are no major bodies in Trinitarian Protestantism that reject Christ’s eternal Sonship.
That rejection is typically only found among non-Trinitarians like in Oneness Pentecostalism.
In fact, the Southern Baptist Confession that Craig is a member of says in its official confession of faith that
Baptist Faith and Message 2000 II.B
Christ is the eternal Son of God. In His incarnation as Jesus Christ He was conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary. Jesus perfectly revealed and did the will of God, taking upon Himself human nature with its demands and necessities and identifying Himself completely with mankind yet without sin.
So Craig is in tension with his own denomination on this.
What’s more, he’s taken a public stance opposing it. He’s out there publishing videos and writing popular-level books rejecting it.
In fact, he’s also written scholarly, academic-level works against it.
HARRIS: Some people are reading this clip as you suddenly breaking from orthodoxy, when you published this argument as far back as Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview with J. P. Moreland, in 2018 in the peer-reviewed journal TheoLogica, an international journal for philosophy and religion and philosophical theology. And it’s been on our Reasonable Faith website under scholarly articles for years.
So both on the popular and the academic level, Craig has long opposed this teaching.
That indicates a long and careful study, and he still rejects it.
He’s also been repeatedly warned about it, with people from both inside and outside his community telling him it’s heresy.
HARRIS: Words like “heresy,” once again, have come up more than once.
And—despite these warnings—he persists in rejecting it.
So Craig rejects Christ’s eternal Sonship despite the facts that:
1) It’s the position of his own community.
2) He’s studied it long and carefully.
3) He’s been repeatedly warned that his view is heretical, and
4) He still publicly opposes it and teaches others to do likewise.
In light of those facts, it’s much harder to argue that Craig is not obstinately doubting this teaching.
If you could successfully argue that, though, you could argue that Craig is in good conscience, but he still would be committing what is known as Material Heresy, which is Heresy without obstinacy.
In other words, the matter for heresy—the postbaptismal doubt or denial of a dogma—is still present, even though the person is not obstinate in this rejection.
That’s why people have been warning Bill that his teaching is heretical, even if they aren’t clear on exactly what the definition of heresy is.
But—one way or the other—we’re dealing with heresy here.
William Lane Craig is either a formal heretic because he obstinately doubts Christ’s eternal Sonship—or he’s a material heretic because he doubts Christ’s eternal Sonship but somehow manages to squeak by without being obstinate, despite the factors we’ve named.
Now let’s see how Craig responds to some folks who have pointed out the problems with his position.
John 1:14
HARRIS: It seems the sharpest pushback has been exegetical. Michael Carlino, a theology professor at Boyce College, pointed to John 1:14. Chapter 1, verse 14. He said, quote, “This is heresy. The logos Christianity and eternal generation Craig doesn’t confess isn’t a product of Greek theologians. It comes straight from the apostles.” And then he cited John 1:14, quoting, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” So, Bill, what’s your response to that specific text?
CRAIG: Unfortunately, this just reverts to citing the very passage that most New Testament scholars and Johannine commentators agree does not contemplate the eternal generation of the Son from the Father.
This criticism is based on the verse that we mentioned earlier, where older translations render monogenés as “only-begotten” and recent ones tend to say “only.”
Craig’s argument is contingent on the shift that occurred in 20th century Greek dictionaries being correct, and it fails if the scholars who have argued that this shift was mistaken are correct.
Personally, I don’t have an opinion on which side is correct, and—since I haven’t done extensive study in the history and usage of monogenés, my tendency is to tentatively assume the majority of voices representing the most recent research is correct.
So let’s just assume that the reading “only” rather than “only-begotten” is right.
So what? Just because this word doesn’t prove Christ is the only-begotten Son of God doesn’t mean that he isn’t God’s only-begotten Son.
The doctrine of Christ’s eternal Sonship is taught elsewhere in Scripture. In fact, it’s taught elsewhere in John’s Gospel.
John 3:17 says:
John 3:17
For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him
This passage says that Jesus was sent . . . into the world. That’s a reference to Jesus’ incarnation and birth at Bethlehem.
But in order to be sent somewhere, you have to exist first, and that’s the case here. John has already told us that the Word existed in the beginning, so this passage teaches the pre-existence of Jesus.
And notice what this passage says about the pre-incarnate Jesus. It says he is God’s Son.
So Jesus was God’s Son before the incarnation. That’s why it says God . . . sent his Son into the world.
He didn’t become the Son upon being sent into the world. He already was God’s Son.
And this passage is far from alone in the New Testament. There are a bunch of others.
1 John 4:9 says:
1 John 4:9
God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.
And it’s not just John. Paul says the same things. According to Galatians 4:4:
Galatians 4:4
When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law.
So God sent forth his Son—he was already the Son—and then the Son was born of woman, born under the law.
Similarly, Romans 8:3 refers to God
Romans 8:3
By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh.
Once again, he was already God’s own Son before he was sent. He didn’t become the Son by being sent in the likeness of sinful flesh.
In Colossians 1, Paul says:
Colossians 1:13, 16
He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son. . . . For by him all things were created.
So it was through his beloved Son by whom all things were created.
And the author of Hebrews says
Hebrews 1:2
[God] has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.
So the way God created the world was by his Son.
So there are lots of passages in the New Testament that speak of Jesus as God’s Son in eternity, before he became incarnate in the world.
You could try to take all of these statements in some kind of futuristic sense—like they’re speaking of Jesus in terms of what he would eventually become.
But that’s not the natural reading of these passages. It’s not what the language suggests, and not what a normal reader of the New Testament documents would have concluded.
It’s also not what the early Christians concluded after the New Testament, because they concluded that Jesus was eternally the Son. That’s why that line is in the Creed.
The only thing that could compel you to take these verses in the unnatural sense that Craig needs would be if you had very strong evidence that Jesus was not the Son before his incarnation.
And there are no passages in the New Testament that say that.
Craig simply does not have the kind of texts he needs under sola scriptura to support that idea.
But—in addition to the passages that speak of Jesus being the Son before the incarnation—there is a whole nother line of reasoning that points to the same conclusion.
I’ve already alluded to it, but now let’s make it explicit.
The Ontological and Economic Trinity.
HARRIS: Put on your thick skin for this one, Bill. Luke Stamps, a theology professor at the Clamp Divinity School of Anderson University, made a similar point, quoting, “I’m not a Craig hater. I think he has done a lot of important apologetic work. But this is really bad. Logos Christology originates with John and Old Testament precedents. Both Word and Son imply eternal origin. Plenty of ‘from’ language in the New Testament that can’t be reduced to the economy,” end of quote. We’ll explain “economy” in a second. Bill, where do you think that argument goes wrong, if it does?
CRAIG: Well, let’s tease apart Professor Stamp’s statement. First, he says Logos Christology originates with John and Old Testament precedents. Well, yes, the Logos Christology of the early Greek apologists, like Athenagoras and Tatian and so forth, drew their inspiration from John’s prologue, where he speaks of the Logos. And some scholars have speculated that John’s idea of the Logos could derive from the Word of God in the Old Testament, though I doubt it. The Word is never personified in the Old Testament. But in either case, there is no doctrine of divine begetting. Now, second, Professor Stamps says both Word and Son imply eternal origin. But here it’s important to distinguish between the ontological Trinity and the economic Trinity. The ontological Trinity is God as he exists in himself, independent of creation. The economic Trinity concerns the various roles that the members of the Trinity play in the plan of salvation.
What Craig is saying here is correct. Theologians do distinguish between the Ontological Trinity—which is also called the Immanent Trinity. It’s also called the Theology of the Trinity—and it refers to the persons of the Trinity apart from creation.
That’s contrasted with the Economic Trinity, which refers to how the persons of the Trinity relate to creation, to the economy of salvation.
CRAIG: So, for example, the Father is the person who sends the Son into the world. The Son is the person who assumes a human nature, becomes incarnate, and dies on the cross for our sins. The Holy Spirit is the person of the Trinity who then superintends and sanctifies the church after the second person’s ascension to heaven.
So that’s a description of the economic Trinity, of how the missions of the three divine persons play out in the world.
What Craig wants to do is put up a wall around the economic Trinity so you can’t draw any inferences about the ontological Trinity from it.
You see, theologians—both Protestant and Catholic—generally hold that the economic Trinity reflects the ontological Trinity.
So in the economic Trinity, the Father sends his Son into the world, and the Father and the Son send the Holy Spirit at Pentecost to be with the Church.
That reflects the ontological Trinity, where the Father eternally begets the Son and the Spirit proceeds from the Father and, Western Christians confess, the Son.
Thus the Catechism says:
Catechism of the Catholic Church 236, 258
The Fathers of the Church distinguish between theology (theologia) and economy (oikonomia). “Theology” refers to the mystery of God’s inmost life within the Blessed Trinity and “economy” to all the works by which God reveals himself and communicates his life. Through the oikonomia, the theologia is revealed to us; but conversely, the theologia illuminates the whole oikonomia. God’s works reveal who he is in himself; the mystery of his inmost being enlightens our understanding of all his works.
It is above all the divine missions of the Son’s Incarnation and the gift of the Holy Spirit that show forth the properties of the divine persons.
So the missions of the divine persons—the oikonimia or economic Trinity—reflects the theologia—the immanent or ontological Trinity.
The sending of the Son into the world thus reflects how the Son is begotten by the Father.
Craig denies that, though—again in defiance of the common Christian understanding.
For him, you can’t infer anything about the eternal relations between the three persons of the Trinity from how they relate to the world and to salvation.
But Craig is missing something.
The Word of God
You’ll remember that—in his criticism—Prof. Stamps said:
HARRIS: Both Word and Son imply eternal origin.
That’s important, and it’s right. Both word and son imply eternal origin.
HARRIS: Both Word and Son imply eternal origin.
I’m really glad that Prof. Stamps made this point. I was waiting for it. I only wish he’d expanded on it, because its significance isn’t as clear as it could be for those who aren’t familiar with this area.
So I’ll make it more explicit.
As I alluded to earlier, the New Testament uses more than one metaphor for the relationship between the First Person of the Trinity and the Second Person of the Trinity.
One is the Family Image, which describes the First Person as a Father and the Second Person as his Son.
That’s the image we are arguing over, and we’ve already seen that the New Testament has a lot of passages that speak of the Second Person being the Son apart from and before Creation.
But—in addition to those passages—the New Testament uses a second image for the relation of these two persons.
This one is based on language, so you could call it the Linguistic Image, where the First Person is depicted as a man who speaks and the Second Person is depicted as the word he speaks.
That image is found in the Gospel of John, where we read:
John 1:1-3
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.
This passage repeatedly refers to Jesus as the Word of God, and it clearly indicates that the Second Person was the word from all eternity: in the beginning, and before all things were made.
So, this is really secure: The Second Person was the Word, completely apart from Creation, in the beginning, which is to say—from eternity.
Now, here’s the thing: What is the relationship between a man and the word he speaks?
Doesn’t the man generate that word? Doesn’t it come from his mouth?
Yeah, it does. The word is from the man who speaks it.
And—in the same way—a son comes from his father.
So it doesn’t matter whether you use the family image or the linguistic image.
In both cases, we have one reality coming from another reality.
A word comes from the man who speaks it, and a son comes from his father.
These are both used as pictures of divine realities, where the person of the Son comes from the Father.
So—even if you were to write off all the passages in the New Testament that imply the Son coming eternally from the Father—there are other passages that speak of Jesus as the Word of God, and a word by its nature comes from the one who speaks it.
And thus the same eternal relationship between the persons holds, which is another reason Craig is wrong.
As Prof. Stamps said, “Both word and son imply eternal origin.”
Aseity and Innascibility
In addition to the reactions on X to Craig’s video against the eternal Sonship of Christ, the magazine First Things produced an article on it.
Craig describes First Things as a Catholic magazine, but it’s not. It’s a Christian magazine that has an ecumenical orientation that includes Catholicism, but it’s not a Catholic magazine.
In any event, Craig says:
CRAIG: I think that this becomes very evident, Kevin, in the article that appeared in the Catholic magazine First Things on this controversy. Let me quote to you from the author, and listen carefully to what he says.
And this is a bit weird, because this was not an anonymous author. Yet, unlike every other author Craig responds to in his video, he consistently doesn’t name him.
I don’t know why that is—why he would name everybody else but refuse to mention the name of this one author.
If I had to guess, it might be because the author is a philosopher named Phillip Cary, and perhaps Craig doesn’t want to directly criticize Cary because they have some kind of relationship as philosophers.
That’s just a guess, though. In any event, he consistently refers to Cary as “the author.”
CRAIG: Let me quote to you from the author, and listen carefully to what he says. He says, “The oneness of the divine essence means that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit share equally and fully in all the divine attributes—eternity, omnipresence, omnipotence, and so forth. But being unoriginated or underived is not one of those attributes. It does not belong to the divine essence but is unique to the Father. It also meant that the attribute later called aseity is characteristic of the Father but not the Son or the Holy Spirit. Craig’s departure from Nicene orthodoxy stems logically from his insistence that the Son and the Spirit must have the same aseity as the Father.” So, what this author is denying is that aseity, or self-existence, belongs to the divine essence—that God is not essentially a self-existent being who exists a se. And this occasions two, I think, very serious questions. Number one, isn’t it essential to deity to be self-existent? Do we really think that God is not a self-existent being, that he’s some sort of contingent being? And secondly, doesn’t it depreciate the person of the Son compared to the Father to regard him as not being self-existent? How can you say that the Son is not inferior to the Father if the Father has this great-making property of aseity, or self-existence, that the Son and the Spirit do not share? So I think those are really serious theological questions that need to be asked.
Now, you’ll recall that earlier I distinguished aseity from another term.
Aseity refers to God’s existence From himself. Unlike every created being, he is not dependent on any other entity. That’s a divine attribute, and it is shared by all three persons of the Trinity.
Craig is correct that the divine nature—which the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit all possess—has aseity. None of them are created and depend on anything outside the Trinity to exist.
But Cary was using the term aseity in an older sense that could apply only to the Father, and to avoid confusion, another word was coined to express what is unique about the Father.
That word is Innascibility, which means Ungenerated, Ungenerability.
The Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, and the Son is begotten, born, or generated by the Father, but the Father isn’t generated by any other person, so the Father is innascible.
That’s the traditional language used to express this point.
What Cary meant to say would be better expressed by saying that the Father alone is innascible.
This is a technical point—but talking about the Trinity involves some very subtle concepts that need to be expressed using precise wording—and today, if you talk about aseity, you’re usually referring to the creature-Creator distinction, while if you talk about innascibility, you’re talking about the relations of uncreated persons.
The problem here is that both Cary and Craig are using the same word with different meanings, which is causing the problems.
Cary is right to affirm that the Father has something that the Son and the Spirit don’t. He has innascibility, so he does not come from any other divine person.
And Craig is right that the Father, Son, and Spirit are all uncreated, and all possess the one divine nature, which has aseity.
So they’re talking past each other because they’re using the same term in different ways.
Separating Christians?
HARRIS: Should a Christian who disagrees with you on this still consider you a co-laborer in defending the faith? Or is this the kind of issue that should divide fellowship—something that we should divide over?
CRAIG: I don’t think we should divide over it. I mean, should I separate myself from fellow Christians because they have added this extrabiblical doctrine? Well, no, they’re free to believe it if they want, but I’m just not obligated to believe it, given the lack of biblical warrant for it.
Well, it’s very magnanimous of Bill to say that he’s not going to separate himself from Christians who do believe in Christ’s eternal Sonship.
That’s the kind of generous offer that it really requires a good dose of chutzpah to make but—as I said—Craig displays a robust sense of self-confidence.
And of course Craig is going to say that people shouldn’t reject him as a co-laborer in defending the Faith or disfellowship him as a Christian.
But he’s at least a material heretic, and heretics always say that people shouldn’t reject or disfellowship them.
Craig is still a Christian, because heretics—material or otherwise—are still Christians.
They are Christians who are rejecting a dogma of the Faith, but they’re still Christians, which means that they are baptized believers in Jesus.
Craig is baptized, and he believes in Jesus, so he’s a Christian.
To cease being a Christian as we’d just defined it, he’d have to cease believing in Jesus, because once you’re baptized you can’t become unbaptized.
And ceasing to believe in Jesus is a different and more extensive sin known as apostasy.
As the Code of Canon Law states:
Code of Canon Law 751
Apostasy is the total repudiation of the Christian faith.
Craig hasn’t totally repudiated the Christian faith, so he’s not an apostate, but his at-least-material heresy is a serious barrier between him and other Christians.
Since he’s not Catholic, he’s not subject to the canonical penalties for heresy that the Catholic Code of Canon Law provides, and how his own community in the Southern Baptist Convention handles this is up to them.
Thus far—so far as I can tell—they haven’t disciplined him in any way, and I doubt that they will.
Conclusion
Now, I’m not going to deny that he’s written some valuable apologetic work. Some.
To be frank, he also makes a lot of mistakes.
I do appreciate independent thinking, including among apologists, and Craig definitely displays that, but Craig carries independence of thought so far that he’s basically completely untethered from the historic Christian community.
If he can’t prove something to his own satisfaction, he’s prepared to reject it, even if it is part of the most important Christian confession of faith.
It’s like he doesn’t believe that the Holy Spirit has been guiding the Christian community down through the centuries, and so he’s free to disregard something as fundamental as the Nicene Creed.
The language of the New Testament that indicates that Jesus is the eternal Son of God and the image of the Word coming from God naturally led Christians to conclude that the person of Jesus originates from the person of the Father.
But neither the New Testament’s language nor the Christian community’s conclusions based on this language—under the guidance of the Holy Spirit—phases Craig.
And that has led him into at least material heresy on the doctrine of God.
What’s more, this isn’t the only thing like this. He’s also open to charges of at least three other heresies involving the nature of God and Christ.
He’s been credibly accused of multiple heresies regarding the core of the Christian faith.
If you’d like me to do a video about that, let me know in the comments.
So he has done useful work apologetically, but it’s also profoundly flawed and mixed with several different doses of poison on the doctrines of God and Christ.
Recently, I was talking to a friend who expressed the opinion that Craig used to do better apologetics work than he does now.
My friend speculated that Craig’s work has been declining with age, and he should reevaluate his public ministry.
I don’t know whether that’s the case—and I, personally, do not use the word heresy casually; things have to be really clear and really serious for me to use that term; in fact, I’m known for not calling people heretics—but given the number of heresies that Craig teaches I can only say that it’s a good thing people are finally paying attention to this.
His fellow Protestants should realize that Craig teaches at least material heresy regarding God and Christ.
And Catholics who admire him should realize both that and that—despite his superficial friendliness—Craig is totally willing to rant about how bad Catholicism is when it will get him in good with his coreligionists.
So nobody should be blind to Craig’s flaws.
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VIDEO SOURCES:
Original Craig Short: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1op3QM5RUKk
Original Craig Response: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpCkHX7MdJ8