Well, I did a limited research on when it was that the Word was generated. It definitely could not have been when “God said Let there be light”. This I think, although Saint Augustine and Tertullian did not think so. Tertullian thought that the primeval light was the ‘nativity’ of the Word.
Tertullian:
“Then, therefore, does the Word also Himself assume His own form and glorious garb, His own sound and vocal utterance, when God says, Let there be light. Genesis 1:3 This is the perfect nativity of the Word, when He proceeds forth from God— formed by Him first to devise and think out all things under the name of Wisdom— The Lord created or formed me as the beginning of His ways…”
I consider that before the primeval light was created the earth and the heavens had already been created (Genesis 1.1). The Word we understand was generated before all creation, so He was not generated after the creation of the earth, the heavens, and angels.
I further consider that the Word has the same being as the other two persons. If the Word is Wisdom, for example, and as it says in the OT, I can not imagine or conceive that there was in eternity a point (?) in where the Father was but not the Son nor the Holy Spirit. This thinking leads to the absurdity of God not having wisdom nor love.
I thought I asked a simple question, but, it can really make one ponder and ponder. I don’t like being in disagreement with the Fathers and I haven’t found a Father that really just plainly agrees with me. Yet, I don’t understand how Augustine given the understand that he came to have of the Trinity by he Grace of God, could really think that the primeval light was the generation of the Word, when he made the analogy of the generation of the Word to how we conceive ideas with our intellect. Maybe, he came to a better understanding later in life and the Confession was an early work, I don’t know.
Saint Thomas continued where Saint Augustine left of with the understanding of the generation of the Word and the Holy Spirit and how the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are three distinct and complete persons and one being. Saint Thomas uses the analogy of Augustine of comparing our intellect and conception of ideas etc… to the generation of the Son by the Father. In one of his hermeneutical approaches he does consider that if considered in the anagogical sense 'Let there be light" could mean the entrance of Christ into creation (but I don’t think by this he means the generation of the Word).
"Thomas himself gives an example of the senses of Scripture as applied to a particular passage: “When I say ‘Let there be light’ and speak of corporeal light, it pertains to the literal sense. If ‘Let there be light’ is understood as ‘let Christ be born in the church,’ it pertains to the allegorical sense. If it is understood as ‘let us be introduced into glory through Christ,’ it pertains to the anagogical sense. If it is understood as ‘let us be illumined in our intellects and inflamed in our affections,’ it pertains to the moral sense.”
www3.nd.edu/~afreddos/papers/Taqandss.htm BTW, this whole article is an excellent read and the title is: REALITY—A Synthesis Of Thomistic Thought
by Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O. P.
St. Thomas Aquinas and Sacred Scripture
www3.nd.edu/~afreddos/papers/Taqandss.htm
Here are some interesting things I was reading:
Question 27. The procession of the divine persons
newadvent.org/summa/1027.htm
The section on Augustine is good here:
theopedia.com/Eternal_generation_of_the_Son
Tertullian:
newadvent.org/fathers/0317.htm
Saint Cyril of Jerusalem:
On the Words, the Only-Begotten Son of God, Begotten of the Father Very God Before All Ages, by Whom All Things Were Made.
“11. The Father then begot Him not in such wise as any man could understand, but as Himself only knows. For we profess not to tell in what manner He begot Him, but we insist that it was not in this manner. And not we only are ignorant of the generation of the Son from the Father, but so is every created nature. Speak to the earth, if perchance it may teach you Job 12:8: and though thou inquire of all things which are upon the earth, they shall not be able to tell you. For the earth cannot tell the substance of Him who is its own potter and fashioner. Nor is the earth alone ignorant, but the sun also : for the sun was created on the fourth day, without knowing what had been made in the three days before him; and he who knows not the things made in the three days before him, cannot tell forth the Maker Himself. Heaven will not declare this: for at the Father’s bidding the heaven also was like smoke established by Christ. Nor shall the heaven of heavens declare this, nor the waters which are above the heavens. Why then art you cast down, O man, at being ignorant of that which even the heavens know not? Nay, not only are the heavens ignorant of this generation, but also every angelic nature. For if any one should ascend, were it possible, into the first heaven, and perceiving the ranks of the Angels there should approach and ask them how God begot His own Son, they would say perhaps, We have above us beings greater and higher; ask them. Go up to the second heaven and the third; attain, if you can, to Thrones, and Dominions, and Principalities, and Powers: and even if any one should reach them, which is impossible, they also would decline the explanation, for they know it not.”
newadvent.org/fathers/310111.htm
This website here is not Catholic but they do present the understanding that the Word is eternal and always was by using biblical references:
biblelessons.com/begotten.html
Bottom line, I don’t think the primeval light was the generation of the Word.
Peace
O dear Abba, that the light was the sun. When I first saw your question I thought same as you that in fourth day God made sun and moon so that in Genesis 1:3 God said ’ let there be light’, that light was not the sun; still then when you continue read, Genesis 1:4,5–'And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.5God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. ’ so this light is sun, because only sun is the light separate day and night .
