Marius Victorinus and Hilary of Poiters are strangers to most lay Christians. I was unfamiliar with them for the first twenty-two years of my life. Both from the 4th century A.D., these scarcely-known church fathers offer valuable insights into doctrine of the Trinity. In this article, Victorinus and Hilary will be our guides as we explore why the Nicene phrase “begotten, not made” matters for our everyday lives.
In the previous article, I claimed that the begottenness of the Son strikes at the heart of how we view God and the Gospel. It shows that Christ is unique from all of creation, is one in Being or “essence” with God the Father, and is the one who reveals the Father to us. And without this revelation, God would remain unknowable and impersonal. We would never experience the depth of God’s love for us. He would be an altogether different God. To understand this, let us dive into the arguments of Marius and Hilary.
Marius Victorinus
Marius Victorinus (c. 285-365 A.D.) wrote extensively on the begottenness of the Son in his refutation of Arianism. His writings are overshadowed by more well-known church fathers, but he was truly one of the pioneers of expositing the doctrine of the Trinity.
According to Victorinus, Christ’s begottenness demonstrates that he is utterly unique from all of creation. He uses a simple argument from Colossians 1:15-16, “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth.” Arians uses this verse to argue that Christ was born at a point in time as the first and greatest creation of God. But Victorinus refutes this heresy by pointing out that “all things” and “Christ” exist in two different categories.1 How could the Apostle have been any more clear that Christ is not a part of creation? Christ is “firstborn,’ meaning he is preeminent over all creation. And if he is not a part of creation but over it, then he is the Creator himself.
Victorinus also argues that the Son is of one Being or “essence” with the Father. Victorinus explains this by offering three different meanings of the word “son.” Someone can be a son, “by truth, by nature, or by convention.”2 Now, Scripture repeatedly testifies that Christ is the only Son of God. That is to say, no one else is Son in the same manner that Christ is. So, which meaning of “Son” applies uniquely to Christ?
- It is not natural (i.e. biological) sonship. Victorinus explains that “son by nature is the mode in the generation of animals,” which clearly does not apply uniquely to Christ.3
- It is not conventional (i.e. adoptive) sonship. Adoption is when someone makes or declares another to be his son. This is the sense in which all believers are sons of God (see Romans 8:14-15). If all believers are sons by adoption, then Christ is not a son in that manner. 4
- Therefore, it is true (i.e. same-essence) Sonship. Victorinus concludes that Christ must be a son “according to truth,” which “is different from other modes and more divine than all the others.” To be a son by truth “is to be son by his very substance.”5 In other words, to say Christ is the only-begotten Son means he is of one Being with the Father.
Lastly, the Son’s begottenness means he manifests the Father to us. Victorinus uses a rather philosophical analogy of “being” and “action” to describe the Father and Son.6 The Father is pure infinite Being, completely unknowable apart from his actions. The Son finds his origin in the Father, not in the sense of being created, but in the sense that “action” proceeds from “being.” Victorinus reasons, “Whence it follows that the Son will differentiate himself in this way, that he moves himself and acts for the sake of manifestation, whereas the Father, because of his transcendent divinity, acts in ways unknowable to us.” 7
Confused? Here’s a simpler way to think of this concept. We often say, how you act reveals who you are. Now apply this statement to God. The Son, God’s action, reveals who the Father is. This is the reason the Father sent the Son into the world: to reveal himself to us. As John 1:18 states, “No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.” Christ is our only path to seeing and knowing the Father.
Hilary of Poitiers
Hilary of Poitiers (c. 310-367 A.D) was also instrumental in developing the doctrine of the Trinity. Hilary’s writing directly influenced Augustine, who wrote one of the greatest Christian works on the Trinity. Both Hilary and Victorinus have Nicean theology, but Victorinus emphasizes philosophy while Hilary emphasizes biblical exegesis. According to Trinitarian scholar Stephen Holmes, the most interesting contribution of Hilary is “the sheer preponderance of exegesis, as opposed to any other sort of material.”8 In his work. De Trinitate, Hilary uses numerous Scriptures to explain the begottenness of the Son.
For instance, Hilary highlights the baptism of Jesus where God declares, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well-pleased.” Hilary hones in on the pronoun “My,” and concludes “His true nature is expressed by the pronoun which gives the indubitable sense of ownership.”9 It is as if the Father is saying, “He has given to others the title of sons, but He Himself is My own Son; I have given the name to multitudes by adoption, but this Son is My very own.”10 God repeated these words to the founders of the Church on the Mount of Transfiguration with Moses and Elijah and Jesus’ side. God then commands in Matthew 17:5, “Listen to him.” By commanding us to listen to Jesus, the Father points us to Jesus’ self-declarations about his Sonship. We will focus on one of these self-declarations.
John 3:16 reveals the divine nature of Jesus and provides a shining example of how the Son reveals the Father to us. The verse reads, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” The Son is a gift from God that shows his love for the world. Hilary points out that the greater the gift, the greater the evidence of love. If the Son was merely a creature, the price of the gift would be small indeed, for he would be “raised up from nothing for the redemption of objects equally raised up from nothing.” Such a cheap price would be “poor assurance of his favor toward us.”11 But God did not simply give an adopted or created Son. He gave is very own eternal and divine Son. This is the greatest possible gift, and therefore the greatest possible assurance of his favor. Hilary states beautifully, “Herein is the proof of His love and affection, that He gave His own, His Only-Begotten Son.”12 As Fred Sanders puts it, “The revelation of the Trinity is a revelation of God’s own heart.”13
The eternal Sonship of Christ matters for the Christian faith. If Christ is not unique from all of creation, and if he is not of one Being with the Father, then he does not truly reveal the Father to us. Without the eternal Son, we could never see or experience the depth of God’s love. If God offered a finite being, how could we trust that his love is infinite? The proof of God’s love is this: God gave his own self for us. We know the depth of God’s love for us because the Father gave his eternally-beloved Son for our sake. For this reason, we owe a tremendous debt to giants like Victorinus and Hilary, who spent their lives defending the eternal Sonship of Christ.
God did not beget the Son at a point in time. The Father and Son have existed and loved each other from eternity past. Then comes the greatest news of all. The Father gave his Son in order to share that infinite love with us. Christ is the deepest revelation of our loving Father.
- Maruis Victorinus, “Letter to Candidus,” inTheological Treatises on the Trinity, translated by Mary T. Clark (1981. Reprint, Washington, D.C.: CUA Press, 2001), 82 ↩︎
- Victorinus, “Letter to Candidus”, 82 ↩︎
- Victorinus, “Letter to Candidus”, 82 ↩︎
- Victorinus, “Letter to Candidus”, 82 ↩︎
- Victorinus, “Letter to Candidus”, 82 ↩︎
- Victorinus, “Against Arius IA” inTheological Treatises on the Trinity, translated by Mary T. Clark (1981. Reprint, Washington, D.C.: CUA Press, 2001), 95 ↩︎
- Victorinus”Against Arius IA” ↩︎
- Stephen Holmes, The Quest for the Trinity: The Doctrine of God in Scripture, History, and Modernity (Downers Grove, IL: Intervasrity, 2012), 129 ↩︎
- Hilary of Poitiers, The Trinity, translated by Stephen McKenna (reprint with corrections, 1968.
Reprint, Washington, D.C.: CUA Press, 2002), BK XI ↩︎ - Hilary of Poitiers, The Trinity, BK XI ↩︎
- Hilary of Poitiers, The Trinity, BK XI ↩︎
- Hilary of Poitiers, The Trinity, BK XI ↩︎
- Fred Sanders. The Triune God (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2016), 240 ↩︎
