Begotten, Not Made

Barth argues in CD 1/1 that the generation of the Son is not only antecedent to and the eternal ground of the act of creation, but that it is a superior act of the Father. The Son’s generation points to “the bringing forth of God from God,” which is greater than the “bringing forth of the creature by God.” More elaborately, “In the superiority of bringing forth from God in God over bringing forth by God, in the superiority of the freedom in which God posits His own reality over the freedom in which He posits a reality distinct from himself, in the superiority of the love in which He is an object to Himself over the love in which the object that exists by His will in distinction from Himself ?Ein this superiority lies the significance of ‘begotten, not made.’” (Quoted in Stanley Grenz’s fine Rediscovering the Triune God .) In the begetting of the Son we have a supreme realization of what for Barth is chiefly characteristic of God’s character ?Ethat He is the God who loves in freedom.