"Born of the Father"

[Shakuhachi]

We recite the Nicene Creed in Mass but seldom really reflect or understand what we say.

“I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the Only Begotten Son of God,
born of the Father before all ages.”

Both “Begotten” and “born” are usually understood as actions completed in time. But “before all ages” seems to mean before time existed, in eternity.

 

[Vico]

We recite the Nicene Creed in Mass but seldom really reflect or understand what we say.

“I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the Only Begotten Son of God,
born of the Father before all ages.”

Both “Begotten” and “born” are usually understood as actions completed in time. But “before all ages” seems to mean before time existed, in eternity.

Yes.

Catechism of the Catholic Church

465 The first heresies denied not so much Christ’s divinity as his true humanity (Gnostic Docetism). From apostolic times the Christian faith has insisted on the true incarnation of God’s Son “come in the flesh”.87 But already in the third century, the Church in a council at Antioch had to affirm against Paul of Samosata that Jesus Christ is Son of God by nature and not by adoption. The first ecumenical council of Nicaea in 325 confessed in its Creed that the Son of God is “begotten, not made, of the same substance ( homoousios ) as the Father”, and condemned Arius, who had affirmed that the Son of God “came to be from things that were not” and that he was “from another substance” than that of the Father.88

87 Cf. 1 Jn 4:2-3; 2 Jn 7.
88 Council of Nicaea I (325): DS 130, 126.

 

[Shakuhachi]

And yet the Father does not really have priority nor seniority. They are co-equal.

 

[porthos11]

We recite the Nicene Creed in Mass but seldom really reflect or understand what we say.

“I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the Only Begotten Son of God,
born of the Father before all ages.”

Both “Begotten” and “born” are usually understood as actions completed in time. But “before all ages” seems to mean before time existed, in eternity.

And yet we know that to not be the case.

We cannot draw too much dogma on this question because the Creed, no matter how orthodox it is, is still a construct of language, and thereby a finite construct trying to express an infinite truth. Even that would hit its limits. “Before all ages” is the best language can do. Since we know that God is eternal and outside of time, we therefore do not look for contradictions of that in the Creed. “Ages” in this case does refer to this reality, space and time, so “before all ages” is outside of our plane of existence. We understand this to mean “eternity” even though eternity is better understood as transcending time than “before” time.

 

[twf]

There is the monarchy of the Father, in that the Son is begotten of the Father, and the Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son. But these are eternal timeless actions… and the three persons are one being, consubstantial… one in all things except in their relationship to one another (being begotten, begetting, proceeding, etc). But yes, definitely co-equal in majesty and glory and power.

 

[Shakuhachi]

here is the monarchy of the Father, in that the Son is begotten of the Father, and the Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son. But these are eternal timeless actions…

Can we think a continuous, ongoing sense of eternal?