By Angus Harley

“For just as the Father has life in Himself, even so He gave to the Son also to have life in Himself” (John 5:26)

In this article is the beginning of my exegetical critique of Carson’s doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son and his exegesis of John 5:26. As Carson’s article on John 5:26 was so heavily laden with theology, I decided that in a previous article I would address his theology first, so as to draw out the theological system that lay behind his exegesis. The article showed Carson’s adherence to the doctrine of the Son’s eternal generation, and its accompanying beliefs of the Son deriving divine life and deity from the Father, and of the Eternal Functional Subordination (EFS) of the Son. It was concluded that these doctrines were theologically wrong. Their major failing was that they read back into eternity and the Son’s divine nature aspects of his Mediatorial role as the Son of Man, the Man for us. In response to Carson, it was maintained that John’s theology, and that of the Bible, was that Jesus as to his deity and Sonship was autotheos: he derived his deity and his divine Sonship from no one, not even the Father.  It was also argued that it was exclusively Jesus’ Mediatoral status as the Son of Man, as the Son in the flesh, that accounted for each and every reference in the NT to any form of subordination or inferiority to the Father.

As Carson’s exegesis of John 5:25 has a wider exegetical base in John’s Gospel, I have decided to spend this article addressing John’s understanding of the Word of God incarnate, specifically as related in John 1:1-18, as his teaching is in many ways the opposite of Carson’s model of eternal generation, and of the Son as having divine life imparted to him by the Father. The succeeding article will explicitly attend to Carson’s exegesis of John 5, especially v26.

CARSON’S ‘TEMPLATE’

In his article on John 5:26, Carson maintains the following four aspects, which, in effect, represent his interpretive ‘template’ for understanding the subordination verses of John’s Gospel.

The Son does only what the Father is doing (5:19). This functional aspect, taken in itself, is that both the Father and the Son do the same thing. The agency angle is that the Word is “God’s Word- God’s own agent in creation (1:1-5).” Thirdly, the Son is dependent on the Father (the Son does what the Father does). Fourth, divine dependence indicates “a form of subordination”:

“[Jesus] insists that “the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing” (5:19). Here is dependence of the most thorough kind, a form of subordination (there is certainly no reciprocity in the relationship)—yet it immediately turns out to be a subordination carefully qualified. The Son can do only what he sees his Father doing, we are told, “because whatever the Father does the Son also does” (5:19). Two elements in this clause are striking. (a) The Son’s activities are co-extensive with those of the Father. Has the Father created all things? So also has the Son, as God’s Word—God’s own agent in creation (1:1–5). Is it the Father’s prerogative to give resurrection life, raise the dead, and exercise final judgment? So also is it the prerogative of the Son (5:24–30).”[1]

I hope the reader can see that in the above we have a kind of template for Carson’s view of Jesus as the Word and as divine Son whilst on earth, in which the Son’s entire earthly ministry is seen as a giant mirror-reflection of a prior, eternal, order that places the Son in eternal subordination to the Father.

The rest of the paper will assess this ‘template’, adding more of Carson’s views as it goes along.

THE WORD/GOD INCARNATE (JOHN 1:1-18)

John anchors his theology of the Son in his status and role as God the Word. For it is this Word who became incarnate, revealing to the world the salvation and light of God. John 1:1-18 is for that reason foundational to John’s Gospel, as it serves as a proper ‘introduction’ that outlines the main themes of John’s Gospel of the Word made flesh, which themes are subsequently unfolded throughout the rest of the Gospel. Let us remind ourselves of what John 1:1-18 says:

“1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. 4 In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. 5 The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.

6 There came a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness, to testify about the Light, so that all might believe through him. 8 He was not the Light, but he came to testify about the Light.

9 There was the true Light which, coming into the world, enlightens every man. 10 He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. 11 He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him. 12 But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

14 And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. 15 John *testified about Him and cried out, saying, “This was He of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me has a higher rank than I, for He existed before me.’” 16 For of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace. 17 For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him.”

The extremely limited revelation directly

and explicitly concerning the pre-creation God

In approaching this theology about the Word incarnate found in John 1:1-18, there is a vital preliminary matter that comes out of John 1:1-3 in particular: the limited extent of the info we have on God in the pre-creation, or eternal-past, era.

Approach with caution

It may surprise us that the Scripture does not explicitly and directly refer to more than a few general concepts concerning God’s actual activity and being prior to the creation of all things. There is, of course, the references to God being everlasting and eternal. We also know that the Triune God had a pre-conceived plan from before creation. There may be some other verses, but not many, about God’s actual actions in eternity itself, or just the pre-creational past itself.

Some crumbs in John

As a matter of fact, John’s Gospel gives us mere crumbs of direct and explicit info concerning the eternal, that is, pre-creational, activities of the Godhead. The vast majority of our data is that which extrapolates from John’s witness that refers to the Triune God’s persons and actions in time. In John 1:1-3, it states that God and the Word, who himself was God, created all things. In this, God and the Word plainly pre-dated the creation of all things, and this assumes a ‘plan’ to do so. A second instance is John 17:5, “Now, Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was.” This verse takes us back to the pre-creation state once again, giving to us one more crumb of info that at that time the Son and Father together possessed divine glory.

Not to be confused with overwhelming evidence for Son’s divinity

These crumbs are not to be confused with the numerous instances in John that refer to Jesus’ divinity, and even to his pre-incarnation past, such as John 8:58. That giant group of evidence is loud and clear, yet, it pertains only to the divine Son as one who has a pre-incarnate state; for in that evidence, we are not told specifically and explicitly about the pre-creation, eternal, era itself. The eternal age is most definitely theologically implied each and every time that anything divine is said about Jesus. For example, God’s very titles imply an eternal past. Nonetheless, pre-creation ‘time’, that is, divine life and action in eternity itself, is not explicitly described, except for a few crumbs. Thus, 99.9% of our knowledge of Jesus as God in John’s Gospel is not specifically and explicitly tied to his pre-creation past, for John’s evidence marks the Son’s divine existence with reference to creation, time, and redemption. John 8:58, for example, references Jesus as the OT God Yahweh in a contemporary context, and as having pre-dated Abraham.

Surely we ought to be super-cautious, therefore, in extrapolating from the data we do have about God in time unto the eternal state itself. Nobody said it better than John Calvin:

“Not to take too long, let us remember here, as in all religious doctrine, that we ought to hold to one rule of modesty and sobriety: not to speak, or guess, or even to seek to know, concerning obscure matters anything except what has been imparted to us by God’s Word. Furthermore, in the reading of Scripture we ought ceaselessly to endeavor to seek out and meditate upon those things which make for edification. Let us not indulge in curiosity or in the investigation of unprofitable things.”[2]

Why the limited info?

This raises the question: why are there only crumbs concerning the Son’s explicit eternal past in John’s Gospel? Why, too, is the Father’s pre-creational condition explicitly mentioned so few times (e.g., 1:1; 17:5)? Of course, John does not at all explicitly refer to the Spirit’s pre-creation past. Yet, we know that he did exist pre-creation (Gen.1:2ff.), for he is God and Creator (Gen.2:7; Job 26:13; 33:4; Psa.33:7; John 3:8; 14:16-20, 26; 15:26-27, etc.). Why does John operate in this way? Why does he not save us a whole lot of bother as modern Evangelicals and assist us in constructing our theology of the pre-creational God?

The main answer to these questions is that John’s Gospel- the whole bible-  understand the entire revelation of God to us over and against his work in both creation and redemption. There is nowhere in the bible any discussion of eternity as abstracted from God’s being and plan at work to create and to redeem. Think, again, of John 1:1. The pre-creation God is not spoken of as abstracted from creation, but as the One about to create, to the Creator. Similarly, in John 17:5 are the words of the incarnate Son, who is, through his salvific and Mediatorial lens in time, reflecting back upon the era before the creation of all things. There is, in other words, no explicit discussion or reference to eternity abstracted unto itself, as spoken of outside of time and creation as we know it. It is evident, then, the Scripture is channeling and leading all our thinking down the path predominantly of salvation according to the promise in Jesus Christ. This is the ultimate purpose of the limited data about God’s eternal past.

Practical use

There is some practical Trinitarian use for this limited info. For example, it provides us as Trinitarians with an extremely powerful counter-argument to the Jehovah Witnesses and the like, for all and any of the biblical data about God himself is invariably tied to his work in creation and redemption. So that, if the Jehovah Witnesses argue that the Son was a created being, a lesser god, then we can press them to consistently follow through on this faulty logic to apply it to the Father, for we have as much information about the Father’s pre-creational status as the Son’s; indeed, the info is identical in nature, as we saw: there is zero discussion, in other words, about ‘God’ as abstracted from time, creation, and redemption.

Compounded risk

From the outset, it can be said that the entire enterprise of Theology Proper has risk attached to it, as it is quite substantially built on extrapolations from God’s being and work in time back into eternity past. This risk is compounded x100 in extrapolating from the Son’s Mediatorial status in the then-present of Scripture unto his eternal and divine past; for we have to tote into these extrapolations the Son’s humanity as not pertaining to his divine, eternal past.

Unfortunately, both Carson and Complementarianism are too bold and hasty in making extrapolations from Jesus’ Mediatorial status and work on earth unto his eternal past, so that the risk factor in their actions is observably, and considerably, higher than it ought to be.

Let me quickly illustrate this point. According to EFS, the Son from all eternity received divine authority from the Father in the act of eternal generation. In the same eternal act, the Son was eternally functionally subordinated to the Father from all eternity. The result was, according to EFS, that in his Trinitarian role as eternal Son, Jesus was eternally subordinated to the authority of the Father. So, the one-and-same act of eternal generation led to two different outcomes for the Son in regard to authority: he had divine authority given to him by the Father, in order to be in-himself as fully in possession of divine authority as the Father was; yet, he was as Son eternally under the Father’s authority, from whom he derived his divine authority to begin with.

How can this ‘divine authority’ in the Son be truly divine when he, first of all, derives this authority, and is, in this state of having received ‘divine authority’, subordinate to the Father’s superior divine authority? Carson and Complementarians, as I’ve argued in many papers, are prone not to thinking through their own presuppositions and axioms.

Also, we all rely to some extent on traditional theology as a supporting secondary witness; however, as with Jesus’ Mediatorial status, Carson and the Complementarians put far too much stock in this traditional evidence, thereby unnecessarily compounding the risk factor yet again.[3]

Finally, this debate on the Trinity and eternal generation is more often than not set forward by Carson and Complementarians with at least some reference to the Trinitarian opinions of the Evangelical Feminists.[4] Yet, both Carson and the Complementarians are not able to perceive the risk involved in this, seeing no danger of their Trinitarian theology perhaps being exaggerated and misshaped to counter Evangelical Feminism’s reading of the Trinity. Therein lies more compounded risk.

John’s benchmark for deity and the Godhead

John 1:1-3 serves as a kind of benchmark for John’s Gospel’s understanding of deity and the persons of the Godhead. The Word is directly called “God”, yet as distinguished from “God”, namely, the Father. There are clearly two persons who are called “God”, and one is with the other, and each is “God”. God-the-Word created all things. John 1:1-3 is, therefore, re-interpreting Genesis 1:1ff from a NT, Christological, point of view. This is exceptionally important for it provides the key to understanding the nature of the Son’s deity as John perceives it.

Fully equal to the God of Israel

The one God of Israel, as mentioned in Genesis 1:1, is now explained in John 1:1-3 as two persons: God-the-Word and God. The implications of this are astounding. For John immediately asserts that as the same one God of Israel, the Word created all things. In using such language of the Word, by describing him as the same God of creation as Israel knew, it is to be automatically assumed by the reader that all that applies to God in the classical, OT sense is now, 100%, to be attributed to the Word.

The same unbegotten One!

It follows, then, that:

  • the OT God created; the Word created;
  • the OT God was not begotten in eternity; the Word was not eternally begotten;
  • the OT God has divine life-in-himself, without derivation from another; the Word has divine life-in-himself, without derivation from another;
  • the OT God is subordinate to no one; the Word is subordinate to no one;
  • the OT God is not under authority and is in supreme authority over all; the Word is not under authority and is in supreme authority over all.

Contextual certitude

It is, quite frankly, shocking that Carson cites the Word’s creative act as stated in John 1:1-3 as a clear form of eternal subordination in action. For the context is so heavily saturated with the equality of “God” with “God”, of the “Word” and “God”, that even to suggest any form of subordination violently wrests John’s meaning. That is why, in context, there is no attempt to give to the Word a subordinate role or function in creating all things. Subordination and derivation of deity are exactly the furthest things from John’s mind in a context that lays down that he is the One God of Israel, of creation, the only God, and, by implication, uncreated, unbegotten, divine-in-himself, and eternal!

Re-evaluating the divine roles in creation

There is a far different way to look at the divine roles in creation than that which Carson lays down.

As there are different persons in the Godhead now to be spoken of, from a NT perspective, John reveals their roles in time. Specifically, it is creation that is related in John 1:1-3. In explaining this relationship, we will coordinate with Genesis 1.

Genesis 1 refers to God who spoke, and then there was. It is implied in Genesis 1:2 that it is the Spirit who is the going forth of God’s creative power (see before). This is confirmed to us in the NT content revealing the Spirit as fully God. What the Jews understood as the mere power of God, his personified authority and command, turns out to be the Spirit who is a divine person in the Trinitarian Godhead. He is the going forth of God’s power to create, the executive and ‘hands-on’ Creator. He does not speak, note, in this act of original creation. Did this imply that the Father commanded and the Son acted, through the Spirit, to create all things? Some think so, and in doing so drag the conversation into the subject of subordination.  Yet, Jesus is called the “Word” for a reason: his is the commanding voice that spoke forth, the voice that the OT Jews readily recognized as the source of all things: Elohim. It should not be thought that the Word commanded the Spirit, for the Spirit was the going forth of the creative will of the Word. Put another way, the Word commanded the ‘material’ that was to be shaped into a creation, and it was the power of the Spirit that brought this to pass. Implied as working parallel to, and with, the Word was “God”, in the person we know as “Father”. This entails that, both the Word and the Spirit are functioning to reveal the third person (yes, I said ‘third’), the Father. I am not suggesting by this that there is a sub-order in the Trinity, merely that there are three persons who acted according to a model, or, perhaps, order. For the basic idea that is implied in calling Jesus the Word who was “with God” is that he is the expression, or revealer, of what and who God is and his will. Similarly, the Spirit is the revealer of both “God” (understood as the Father) and the Word, for he is the hands-on Creator.

  • The Word: the divine person who is the commanding Voice of creation that reveals “God”;
  • The Spirit: the divine person who is the executive Power, the ‘hands-on’ Creator, who by creating reveals both “God” and the “Word”.

The unity of persons in ‘function’ is so tight, so inseparable, that we might think that there was only one person in the Godhead! John- indeed the Scripture- is straining human language to describe the different functions of the three persons of the Godhead in creating all things, such is their unity, inseparability, and equality.

No subordination and its form of agency

In this radically different view of the roles of the Trinity in creation, there is not the slightest notion that identity of action indicates a form of functional subordination. Different functions- yes; subordination- no. Nor is there any subordinational form of ‘agency’: the Son is not set apart by the Father to create, leading to the Father creating through him. This is not to deny the Scripture’s explicit teaching that “all things” were created “through” (Gk., dia) the Son (Col.1:16; 1 Cor.8:6; Heb.1:2 see 1 Cor.11:12; Heb.2:10). Many have taken this to mean agency: the Father created through the Son. Perhaps this is so; but if it is, it by no means entails subordination. Interestingly, Romans 11:36 refers to “all things” being “through” (Gk., dia) the Father. Does this include creation, or is it merely the wisdom and ways of God in the plan of redemption that Paul has been speaking of? But even if it does merely refer to God’s incomparable wisdom in his plan of salvation, does that not in itself pose a problem for Carson’s model of agency? For who was working “through” the Father? Who was the Father’s commanding source? For whom is he an agent in the wisdom of redemption? Is it not possible, therefore, that Scripture’s use of dia in regard to the relationship of God the Father to the Son and the act of creation is not one of agency as such? Could it be that, what the NT is aiming to say is that God the Father is creating via the Son, not as a subordinate, nor as an agent, but merely as a revelatory ‘medium’? Yet, if it is insisted that “through”, in the case of Jesus Christ and creation, implies a kind of agency, subordination is not at all present; for, the Father is revealed as Creator through the Word-Son who created all things. Therein lies a form of agency- revelation-agency. It is not an agency of command, nor of subordination- if there is even such a thing as agency going on!

Was Jesus fully God?

Carson’s model raises another concern: was Jesus fully God? If the Son’s status as subordinate in time is a reflection of his eternal subordinate status, is he actually God? I am not the first to ask this question. Indeed, many a cult has taken the position that as the Gospels refer to the incarnate Son, and to his derived authority as Messiah, then any subordination of his in the past, pre-creation, state indicates that he was not truly God, but a ‘god’ or divine in a lesser sense. This then allows them to bypass the blatant evidence of Jesus’ deity throughout John’s Gospel. Yet, how is this mode of operating any different to that used in EFS, in which many of the elements of the Son’s incarnate status and role are found in his ‘pre-creation’ state? 

The Word becoming flesh

The wonder and mystery are that the God of Israel, incorporeal Yahweh of the OT, takes upon himself a corporeal form to save the world from sin and darkness, according to John’s Gospel. And it is the Word specifically, not the entire Godhead, who becomes ‘enfleshed’. It is at this juncture we hit another EFS roadblock.

Mediator, where art thou?

As any Evangelical commentator, Carson is keen to tell us in his commentary about the Son incarnate, who came to earth to die on the cross and was raised from the dead as God’s appointed Christ. He is the Word in the flesh. However, what Carson is dreadfully weak on in his article on eternal generation is a discussion of Jesus’ Mediatorial condition and role. In other words, it is as if, in the article (not the commentary), “the Word came and dwelt among us”, and not, “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us”! Why do I make such a strong accusation?

It is for this reason: Carson’s entire article on John 5:26 only once refers to Jesus as “mediator”,[5] rarely speaks of him as a man, and nowhere refers to him as the “Son of Man”, the Man for us. He refers quite a number of times to Jesus as incarnate, but this is almost entirely in his discourse laying down a contrast between the eternally generated Son as divinely subordinate and the Son as subordinate in his incarnation.[6] How is it possible, in a Gospel that so firmly places the divine Son before us as enfleshed, that the Son’s humanity and Mediatorship are not major factors to be accounted for in this discussion on the Son’s ‘subordination’ and as “begotten”? Does the name “Son of Man” have no relevance to John 5? Let us read John himself:

“26 For just as the Father has life in Himself, even so He gave to the Son also to have life in Himself; 27 and He gave Him authority to execute judgment, because He is the Son of Man. 28 Do not marvel at this; for an hour is coming, in which all who are in the tombs will hear His voice”. (John 5:26-28)

As I will unfold these verses in another article, I will leave aside the bold parallelism that John is using here, to focus on a simple concept: the centrality of the “Son of Man” to Jesus having life-in-himself. Why does John place the title “Son of Man” in such a strategic place, one that, to Carson, is so redolent of the language of EFS? More to the point, why does Jesus himself use that title in this context? Whose voice is to be heard? It is the Son’s- no doubt. But in what capacity? As the Son of Man! John and Jesus do not separate and exclude the role of the Son of Man from the manifestation of divine salvation through Jesus’ actions and teaching. Then why, in his article on eternal generation, does Carson in effect do so?

John’s second assumption

This is to say that, just as John assumes that the reader will immediately attribute full, unadulterated, and complete deity to the Word as the OT God of Israel, he also expects his readers to, just as readily, accept that this Word’s non-subordinate deity and person was in no way compromised, but existed alongside- excuse the wording- his subordinate humanity, working with it and through it. One is not erased by the other, the divine by the human, or the human by the divine; nor is one merged with the other, the divine with the human, or the human with the divine. Both ‘natures’ or states remain in some fashion together, in a mystical union, parallel within the God-man, but never so as to bleed into one another.

The union of two natures

Consequently, the two dimensions of Jesus Christ’s existence- as God and as man- must be held together, yet never so as to be merged or conflated into a kind of mixture. Both natures (divine and human) work together, inseparably, in unison, but each according to its own ‘property’, each according to its own nature.

Thus, we must uphold the full divinity of the Son, wholly equal to the Father and not in any manner subordinate to him in eternity or as God. This must be balanced with the Word as incarnate, as fully subordinate as the Mediator to his Father and his will.

  1. There is the Word as fully God, unbegotten, not subordinate in any way, not even to the Father, and the Word having divine life-in-himself.
  2. There is the Word as enfleshed, who takes on a human existence, having life from the Father, a life even affected by the Fall (although both his flesh and his actions were without sin), who, in this condition, was most certainly subordinate to the Father as the enfleshed Mediator, the Son of Man who came to die on the cross and to rise from the dead to bring eternal, resurrection, life.

Carson’s vs John’s math

Unfortunately, Carson’s system, like that of Complementarianism, forces us to read many of Jesus’ Mediatorial actions into his eternal condition. We may use an illustrative form of math to describe the difference between Carson and John:

  • Carson: the eternal deity of Christ + the Mediatorial Christ = the subordinate Son of eternity;
  • John: the constant of the eternal deity of Christ alongside the constant of the Mediatorial Christ = the constant of eternal deity of Christ alongside the constant of the Mediatorial Christ. No change!

How do the salvific roles work?

Carson’s major objection to my interpretive model will be that I am not taking into consideration the many instances in John’s Gospel in which, as to salvation, the Son does what the Father does, which is in itself reflective of the same divine model in the creation of all things. All of this implies, to Carson, the Son’s subordination in time and in eternity.

Agreement

In agreement with Carson, it is evident in John’s Gospel that the work and order of the Triune persons in creating all things is in its general structure replicated in regard to redemption:

-the Father saves through his Son;

-the Son is the going forth of the Father, one with him, to save the world;

-the Spirit is the going forth of the creative and salvific life of the Father and the Son.

This is the standard, traditional, model of Trinitarian influence on the Godhead’s work in salvation. We can all agree to this generalized model.

Carson’s reversal model

Where Carson and my view part ways is over the influence of Jesus’ Mediatorial status and its role in salvation. Carson’s model, in effect, reads back Mediatorial aspects into the eternal Son’s past, eternal, condition; yet, in the present, as to redemption, the Son is considered from the vantage point as God, and his Mediatorial role sinks into the background. Carson is reversing the emphasis on both ends- the eternal dimension and time as we know it.

Mediatorial divine-salvation

Outside of the two references to the Word and his pre-creation status, in John’s Gospel when we read about the Christ’s divinity it is viewed exclusively through the lens of his Mediatorial status and condition as ‘the Man for us’. The most magnificent example of this ‘duality’ is found in John 20:28 when Thomas exclaims, “ “My Lord and My God” ”. See how the divinity of Christ is manifested in his resurrected person, as the Man for us. There is no attempt by John to extricate one aspect (sheer divinity) from the other (sheer humanity), nor does he blend them to make something else.

It is vitally important that we explain why John portrays Christ in this ‘dualistic’ manner. For, the unique nature of Jesus’ incarnate person is that it is exclusively through his humanity, his Mediatorial role and status, that we see his divine glory and its salvation in action. He had to come in the flesh to die on the cross for the world to be saved (3:16), and subsequently be raised from the dead for the sake of the many who believe in him unto eternal life. Yet, none of his actions were mere human, merely Mediatorial, for in and through these thoroughly human and Mediatorial events of his death and resurrection (God does not die, nor is God raised from the dead), he embodies and manifests his divine glory, power, and will to save sinners. We never see Jesus’ divine glory in John’s Gospel ‘in the raw’, by itself, outside of, or apart from, his condition as the God-man, the Mediator (e.g., 2:11; 18:6).

What, specifically, does divine salvation look like in action in the Son as Mediator? It looks like this:

-the Son preaches the Gospel of repentance, the words of eternal life, building up his apostolic posse and his followers;

-Jesus suffers persecution and goes to war with the Jews, only to be crucified by them; in the plan of God, this is because he is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world by his bloody death;

-and, finally, he is raised bodily from the dead, unto a life of immortality, a resurrection life, which, both spiritually and physically his followers, believers, share in through faith.

This, and this alone, is divine salvation in John: salvation through the person and actions of the Mediator, the Man for us!

The roles of the Trinity reconfigured in salvation

Consequently, we must reassess the Triune God’s roes in salvation according to this model of salvation via the incarnate Word, the Man for us. In the work of salvation, each person of the Trinity is tied into salvation via the incarnate Son himself:

-the Father reveals himself salvifically only via his incarnate Son as the Mediatorial Man for us;

-only as the incarnated Word does the Son reveal the Father and bring forth salvation, through his Mediatorial death and resurrection as the Man for us;

-only as the going forth of God’s salvation in action, as accomplished exclusively in and by the Mediator, the Man for us, the Spirit applies the victory of the Son of Man’s death and resurrection to believers, thereby revealing the Father and his salvation in the Mediatorial Son.

Reverse Russian-doll effect

In John 1:1-18, and on out into John’s Gospel thereafter, there is, to speak illustratively, a kind of reverse Russian-doll effect going on. One doll is placed inside another, all dolls looking exactly the same, ending with the largest doll. So, in John’s Gospel, the exact same theme of the incarnate Word/God/Son enacting salvation for the world is repeated over and over:

  • 1:1-5: the divine perspective of the Word incarnate who comes into a world of darkness to bring the light and life of salvation;
  • 1:6-13: John the Baptist’s testimony to the Word incarnate as light, subsequently explicated by the apostle John himself;
  • 1:14-18: the apostles’ testimony to both the Baptist’s witness to the Word incarnate, and, above all, to the only begotten God in the flesh;
  • 1:19-21:25: the narrative of the Word incarnate, the Son as the Son of Man who comes from heaven to save the world through his death and resurrection.

This arrangement does not allow us to mix together, therefore, the divine and human, to create the impression that the divine could take on the attributes of the human, in regard to the incarnate Word, for both states or natures are incessantly kept separate, yet as mysteriously placed together in the one person of the Son. Let’s look at each ‘doll’ in turn.

John 1:1-5

Carson’s theology and exegesis explained John 1:4 to say the light and life of God and of the Word was first shown in creation in general. Thus, John was not referring, on that occasion, to the Word’s light and life as the Mediator to accomplish redemption and salvation. Mankind rejected God’s creational light and life. Carson concluded that this life of the Son revealed in creation could not have issued from his Mediatorial status as such. Even so, it was later revealed via his Mediatorial role.[7]

What this reading does for Carson is provide a bridge into eternity and into the future. The light and life of God the Word in his creation anticipates the light and life of his Mediatorial role in the future, and a bridge to his past, in which he, as the Son and Creator, derived this light and life from the Father in the act of eternal generation.

It is highly doubtful, however, that this is a wholly correct reading of John 1:1-5, and verses 4-5 in particular, for these verses refer to the spiritual condition of the world at the time of Christ’s incarnation, “The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.” Even if John is alluding to the Word as the source of light and life in creation, for man, it is in the background. For, John’s emphasis is on the light and life of the Word coming into a darkened world, a rebellious creation that hates the Word in its midst. That this is not general revelation and its divine life is surely underscored by John’s exposition of the Word in the flesh in 1:6ff., and throughout the Gospel. There is, in other words, an implied division between v3 and v4. Verse 3 implies that the world (actually, “all things”) came into being by the Word and God; v4, by contrast, implies that the world had rebelled and spurned the light and life of God, to the point where God himself, in the Word incarnate, comes into the world as salvific light and life. It is notable that the text of v3 does not use the terms “light” and “life”, but v4 does, for the implication is that John is explaining Christ as the salvific light and life of the world.

In all of John’s writings, the terms ‘light’ and ‘life’ indicate the salvific revelation of God to the ‘world’; not only so, this salvific light and life invariably come through the medium of the incarnate Word. I will take but a few examples. When Jesus said, “ “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me” ” (14:6), he is talking in reference to going “through” him by faith, as the Mediator between God and men. The most obvious example, of course, is that repentant sinners receive “eternal life”. Jesus as “light” came into the world to save those who turn to it, in his role as the Christ, but also to expose the darkness of the world that hates the light (3:19-21). Even in the book of Revelation, at its end, when the light and glory of the Lamb and of God fill the new heaven and earth, the new creation is purged of sin and filled with the souls of the redeemed who have eternal life (Rev.21-22). 1 John 1:5 is not merely about God in his eternal capacity as light, but denotes light over against darkness, the life of God as without sin and that is salvific as opposed to the darkness of the world, the flesh, and their demonic overlords and antichrists. That is why we can walk in the light and fellowship through the blood of Jesus God’s Son, which cleanses us from all sin (1 Jh.1:7). It is, in other words, a ‘light’ that is specifically cleansing and salvific.[8]  

John 1:6-13

Coming back to John’s Gospel, it is this salvific light and life of the Word in the flesh that is then expanded upon in John 1:6-13 via John the Baptist’s testimony to the Word, and, subsequently, through John the apostle’s explication of the light and its salvific nature. Moses, representing the OT witness as its main prophet, bracketed by the transition prophet John the Baptist, testify to the Word incarnate (1:45; cf., 3:14): the OT ‘God’ of the ancient past, of Moses, was now in their immediate presence! Occasionally, John uses a similar method, in which Jesus is presented as rooted in some way in Israel’s history as their God, for example, “ “before Abraham was, I am” ” (8:58).

John 1:14-18

We then come to the apostles as eye-witnesses to both the Baptist’s confessional work and to the presence of the Word incarnate himself. The link to John the Baptist is vital, for it puts the apostles in the same Christological prophetic-line to which the Baptist and Moses belonged. In this way, both the OT and the NT as one testify to the Word in the flesh. We must imply from this that the NT, apostolic witness to the Son incarnate will in no way violate the OT’s record and testimony to the constant, unaltered deity of God himself; the Word incarnate could never be anything less that 100% God in every way that the OT God was. This, as said before, absolutely- without any condition- obviates any form of eternal subordination, or attributing to the eternal Word any kind of human-like status or action. I am going to end this sub-section at this point, as I will need more time later to focus upon the extremely important references to the Son as “begotten”, as it is upon his use of the term that much of the doctrine of eternal subordination is based.

John 1:19-21:25

Once again, John the Baptist, Moses, and the apostolic witness via the apostle John’s written testimony, combine to testify to the salvific light and life of the incarnate God. Jesus is presented as the Mediator, the Man for us, the Son of Man divinely appointed in heaven and sent into earth to die on the cross, so that many would believe in him unto eternal life. He is then raised from the dead. All the while, woven into his Mediatorial actions is testimony to his divinity and his unique and divine relationship to the Father. This constant and steady witness in the Gospel to Jesus’ deity is deliberately placed to underscored the ‘formula’ that the Son of Man brings in himself the true salvation of God, for he is God in the flesh. He does not represent mere mediated ‘divine’ deliverance, like another Moses, or embody heavenly blessing for many, like Abraham or any other father. He is God, and therefore what we see of him as Mediator is in actual fact the demonstration of divine salvation in action.

Monogenēs

Due to the prominence given to the doctrine of eternal generation, as derived to a great extent from John’s use of monogenēs in regard to Jesus, we will give to John’s phrase its own space.

The context is always the Son’s incarnate condition

It is early on, in John 1:14 and 18, that John takes up the term monogenēs (see, too, 3:16, 18; 1 John 4:9). In a previous article, I maintained that monogenēs is nowhere in John explained as referring to an eternal state, as if to say that the Son was eternally begotten by the Father. Each and every context surrounding the use of monogenēs is taken up with the manifestation of God’s salvation in his incarnate Son, Jesus Christ.[9]

The One who reveals

There is, however, another aspect that I mentioned in that previous article that I wish to expand upon here, and it is the revelational nature of John’s use of monogenēs in John 1:14, 18:

14 And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.

18 No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him.”

I put the appropriate phrases in bold to draw attention to their importance. First of all, notice how the descriptive ‘eternal’ is nowhere used, nor is it tied to any other of John’s uses of monogenēs. Unfortunately, John’s use of monogenēs is translated by many as, ‘eternally begotten’. The natural meaning is patently rooted in Jesus as revelation to us. That is, it is as the Word who “became flesh” that “we [the disciples] saw” his glory, as one begotten from the Father. Given the previous reference to the Word becoming flesh, in saying that the Word was begotten of the Father, this might be another reference to his incarnation, a parallel explaining how that glory was manifested due to the Father’s especial act of enfleshing his Son. Similarly, the phrase “only begotten God” can just as readily be interpreted to mean “God enfleshed” (see John 1:1-5). For as this “only begotten” God, the Word explains (Gk., exēgeomai) the Father, the Unseeable One (5:37; 6:46; 8:38). Thus, the Son as “begotten” is seeable; the Father as ‘unbegotten’ is unseeable. It is the difference between revelation and the impossibility of revelation in itself: the Father who cannot be directly revealed to any is, paradoxically, seen by many only via the begotten God. Surely, if we were referring solely to the ontological nature of the Son as God, from all eternity, he, too, would be inaccessible in his raw divine glory to us; for, the Word was sheer God, equal to the Father in deity. Yet, it is as the Word incarnate that the apostles- and others- saw the Father (14:7, 9; 15:24).

Now, even if it turns out that monogenēs does not mean, in effect, “enfleshed”, when referring to the Son, the dominant interpretation of “one and only” is just as easily employed to stress the same theology of the incarnate Son who revealed the incorporeal Father, the unseeable One. This is to say that, both these alternatives demonstrate that there is no need at all to turn monogenēs into a driving force for a doctrine of eternal generation, as it is the Son’s status and revelation to us as the Word in the flesh that is indicated.

In the next article, we move on to the second part of the exegetical critique of Carson: his comments on John 5 itself, especially v26.

[1] Don Carson, “John 5:26: Crux Interpretum for Eternal Generation”, in Retrieving Eternal Generation, eds. Fred Sanders and Scott R. Swain (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2017), 83.

[2] John Calvin, Institutes 1.14.4.

[3] See my previous article, Angus Harley, “A critique of Don Carson’s interpretation of John 5:26, Part 1”,, All Things New Covenant, July 29, 2025,  https://allthingsnewcovenant.com/2025/07/29/a-critique-of-don-carsons-interpretation-of-john-526-part-1/.

[4] Carson, “John 5:26”, 92, 94.

[5] Carson, “John 5:26”, 95.

[6] Carson, “John 5:26”, 93.

[7] Carson, Gospel, 119.

[8] For the same argument but in a far more erudite form, read Ed L. Miller, Salvation-history in the Prologue of John: the Significance of John 1:3-4 (New Yorik: E. J. Brill, 1989), 64-70.

[9] Angus Harley, “A critique of Don Carson’s interpretation of John 5:26, Part 1”, All Things New Covenant, July 29, 2025, https://allthingsnewcovenant.com/2025/07/29/a-critique-of-don-carsons-interpretation-of-john-526-part-1/.