"He [Christ] is no 'eternal son' always subservient to God, always less than God, always under God. ... It [Son] is his human title, and we should never get trapped in the heretical idea that Jesus Christ is eternally subservient to God" (Commentary on Hebrews, 1983, pp. 28-29).[/b]
John wanted to argue against JW’s and the like, no doubt. John embraced the Second Person of the Trinity as God. However, for MacArthur sonship derived not from the ontological relationship with the Father but from the virgin birth. This cannot be disputed. Again, John affirmed the Second Person’s eternality, but denied his sonship. If John’s former doctrine was indeed true, the relationship of Son to Father would not have been begotten but made! (NOTE: I am not saying that Second Person would be made, but the relationship.) The relationship of Son to Father would be temporal and would require a beginning. However, Scripture teaches and the creeds confirm that the Son is differentiated from the Father by being begotten; but if there is no eternal sonship then there can be no distinction of persons since the Second Person’s nature is predicated upon his eternal, ontological relationship within the Trinity. This you have not dealt with and quite frankly neither has John. God alone with his Logos is not the same as God alone with his Son. I’ll let you decide how significant this relationship is with respect to Christianity. Briefly, we would eclipse the love-relationship that is only understood in the orbit of Father to Son if the Second person were not eternally the Son. Is God eternally Abba to the Son, or not? How important is this? Is the eternal Spirit the Spirit of the eternal Son, or just the eternal Logos? What about the works of the economic Trinity? Were we eternally chosen in the Son of the Father, or just chosen in the Second Person apart from any eternal sonship?
You claim to have disagreed with John’s theology and I of course believe you. Maybe you should consider the ramifications of John's train of thought. What would Christianity lose if the Second Person was not an eternal Son, and how significant would this loss be for the faith? I would argue that without the relationship of Son to Father, we would be left with three Gods and not the ontological Trinity. For the ontological Trinity requires sonship by its very nature.
