What Is the Difference between the “Begetting” of the Son and the “Procession” of the Spirit?

How do the three persons of the Trinity relate to one another? Today, Michael Reeves reflects on the relationship between God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and how this shapes our understanding of the gospel.

NATHAN W. BINGHAM: This week on the Ask Ligonier podcast we are joined by Dr. Michael Reeves, and we are recording live from Ligonier’s 2024 National Conference. Dr. Reeves is president and professor of theology at Union School of Theology in the United Kingdom. Dr. Reeves, what is the difference between the begetting of the Son and the procession of the Spirit?

DR. MICHAEL REEVES: The word begetting is a scriptural word used to describe the relationship between God the Father and God the Son in eternity. Now, it’s a word that’s also used—or we particularly know it—in the Old Testament genealogies, and in the older versions it would be, for example, “Adam begat Seth; Seth begat,” and you have these lists of “begats.” And so, usually that word for begetting is translated in the Old Testament genealogies “fathered”—Adam fathered Cain, and Abel, and Seth.

So, the word begetting is about fathering. And what it shows us is that the relationship between the Father and the Son is not that of two friends or two brothers; it is very specifically a father-son relationship. And that’s important because the whole gospel of adoption—that we can be adopted in Christ as children of the Father—flows from that truth about God.

So, the key difference in this eternal beginning—in eternity, the relationship between the Father and the Son—the key difference between that begetting and the begetting of, for example, my own children, any human children, is that when a human father begets, it’s at a particular point in time. So, there’ll be a point where, years ago, I was not a father, and I became a father at one point. That’s not what’s happening in the relationship between the Father and the Son. This is an eternal truth.

And you can see something of that in the verses that are used and where they’re used, particularly Psalm 2:

You are my Son;
Today I have begotten you. (Psalm 2:7)

It’s quoted a number of different times in the New Testament, referring to different events. So, Galatians 4 says, “God sent forth his Son” (Gal. 4:4). But then we read, at the baptism of Jesus, God the Father saying, “This is my beloved Son” (Matt. 3:17). But Psalm 2 is also applied in Acts 13 to the resurrection. It’s also applied to the ascension. And so, we can see this is an eternal truth. Before the incarnation, through the incarnation, after Jesus had ascended, this is an eternal truth, meaning that God the Father did not become Father at some point so we’re asking, Who is He really? That’s the relationship between the Father and the Son.

It is different from the relationship the Father has with the Spirit in that the Father does not effectively beget two sons. And so, if the relationship between the Father and the Son and the Father and the Spirit were exactly the same, then it could be you’d have the Father and these two other persons who really have nothing to do with each other. Rather, the Father begets His Son eternally and He spirates the Spirit—He breathes out the Spirit—so that the Spirit proceeds from the Father, and—so we see there’s a different relationship—and because the Son says, “Everything the Father does, the Son also does”—everything He sees the Father doing, the Son does—therefore, just as the Father breathes out the Spirit, so the Son breathes out the Spirit. And so, we have that little clause in the creed “I believe in the Spirit, who proceeds from the Father and the Son.”

And so, the difference between begetting and proceeding helps us both to distinguish between the Father, the Son, and the Spirit—to see the Son and the Spirit are not two brothers—but also, we see those words help us to see they are inseparable because rather than having two sons who have nothing to do with each other, the Father begets the Son, spirates the Spirit, and the Son also breathes out the Spirit, such that He is the Spirit of the Son who will always bear witness to the Son.