The Father’s Eternal Generation of the Son We take up now the extremely difficult matter concerning the Nicene distinction between the Father and the Son by means of its doctrine of eternal generation, which doctrine Louis Berkhof defines approvingly as “that eternal and necessary act of the first person in the Trinity, whereby he, within the divine Being, is the ground of a second personal subsistence like his own, and puts this second person in possession of the whole divine essence, without any