The "eternal generation of the son"?
The idea of the Trinitarian "eternal generation" of the son was derived from the Neo-Platonic concept of eternal generation of the "The One, Nous and World Soul"!
The One eternally generates the Nous, in turn the Nous eternally generates the World Soul and down the rungs of the "eternal generating" ladder it goes until we come to lifeless matter (Plato), then there is s complete reversion, where everything is repeated, as if going round an eternal generating circle.
The 2nd and 3rd century church fathers were heavily under the influence of both Platonism, and Neo-Platonism, the latter being a more highly polished version of Platonism.
These church fathers believed there were similarities between Hellenistic philosophy and scripture and both had something in common, which these fathers exploited in order to make their version of Christianity acceptable and intellectual enough so as to attract the pagan masses, and in time it worked, as the old religion with its gods was as good as dead to many of the pagan masses, also, they were familiar with Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus and Proclus!
All these church fathers did in order to make it work was to re-write and re-interpret scripture in order to harmonise it with Greek philosophical concepts, so "The One became "The Father, The Nous became The Son, and the World Soul became The Holy Spirit", this was the harmonisation of Plato...with Christ, these church fathers totally corrupted Christianity and in the end people were left with a version of Christianity that was not even a shadow of primitive biblical Christianity and the finishing touches to the Trinity were given by the church father called "Basil the Great, his brother, Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory of Nazianzus", these were not only influenced by Platonism and Neo-Plaonism, they were saturated with them!
These three church fathers were responsible for the doctrine of "one God in three co-equal, co-eternal persons i.e., "The Father, Son and Holy Spirit" by one "essence" or "substance" (ousia) in three distinct persons, thus a full blown Trinity was developed!
At Nicaea in 325 ce the proto-Trinitarians under the leadership of young Athanasius could not find a single term in the bible to uphold their new novel concept, that Jesus was of the same "substance" (ousia) as that of the Father and that the Son participated in, co-shared in that same substance, that was of the Father.
So, what did the proto-Trinitarians do? They rejected scripture and looked outside of it (extra-biblical) and turned to the pagan Greek philosophy of Aristotle and borrowed his concept/idea of "ousia" (substance) and then forced it into the Nicaean argument against the Arians and added the Greek term "homo" (same), now Nicaea was given "homoousios" (same-substance), but this was not scriptural, but derived from pagan Greek philosophy and in the end because of political expediency (to his later regret) Constantine sided with the proto-Trinitarians, now the Christian world found itself (proto) Trinitarian and later church fathers worked and refined this pagan concept to make it look biblical and Christian!
Much more could be said about the influence of Greek philosophy, but I hope the above should suffice and encourage others to do proper historical empirical research in order to see how much Greek philosophy influence post biblical Christianity and in my view, the best that Trinitarians could be called when it came to Christianity are "Pagano-Christians"!
Two books I would highly recommend that blows the Trinity right out of the water and expose its true origins are:
1. "THE HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION AND CHURCH DURING THE FIRST THREE CENTURIES"
By: Dr. Augustus Neander (Considered by some the greatest church historian to have ever lived)
2. "THE INFLUENCE OF GREEK IDEAS AND USAGES UPON THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH"
By: Andrew Martin Fairbairn-D.D. and Edwin Hatch-D.D.
These two book explore in great detail the true philosophical origins of the Trinity!
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