Begotten or Made and Mary's role in your Salvation

Many believe God chose Aristotelian philosophy because it came closest to His form of reasoning, it a form that attempts to remove relativism, rationalism and subjectivism. God is all powerful, present everywhere in every time, and all knowledgeable; omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient. God is the very essence of Eternity. Recall that eternity has neither beginning nor ending; time then is a linear subset of contained within eternity, from the beginning to end of time. All knowledge is contained within Eternity as well a Divine Singularity.

The son of a human person is the expressed image of his father; the child is ‘begotten’ of the father, not made. Jesus Christ is Son of God; One Divine Person who is begotten in Eternity then in the flesh is the expressed image of God. [Cf. Hebrews 1:3] Contemplating one’s intellect begets wisdom. God’s contemplation is expression as reality. Consequently contemplating is own knowledge is expressed by God as His Wisdom. As God is all knowledge, then His expressed image of all His knowledge is His Wisdom, not made, but begotten. His Wisdom rather exists in eternally with an Eternal Knowledge, much the same way when man uses his knowledge producing wisdom. [Cf. John 1:3; Colossians 1:16-20]

Christ did take on the form of humanity through Mary as Jesus in the mysteries of the Incarnation. And, Christ is the expressed image of God in being the Wisdom of God. We see it in the Greek, “Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος.”(At the beginning of time the Logos already was; and God had the Logos abiding with him, and the Word was God.) [John 1:1], in the same way a man’s wisdom abides in himself. And continues John in the Greek: “καὶ ὁ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο,” (And the Logos became flesh) [John 1:14]. John says that the ‘Logos’ always existed and was God and furthermore the ‘Logos’ became man. Truth exists, the Incarnation happened.

Powerful Eternity (God) is the Wisdom of God, ever present, all powerful. Wisdom exists with God in all eternity. Christ is not ‘made or created’ by God but rather the Same Substance of God, all Eternity. Solomon described Wisdom as follows:

For in her [Wisdom] is the spirit of understanding: holy, one, manifold, subtile, eloquent, active, undefiled, sure, sweet, loving that which is good, quick, which nothing hindereth, beneficent, Gentle, kind, steadfast, assured, secure, having all power, overseeing all things, and containing all spirits, intelligible, pure, subtile. For wisdom is more active than all active things: and reacheth everywhere by reason of her purity. For she is a vapour of the power of God, and a certain pure emanation of the glory of the almighty God: and therefore no defiled thing cometh into her.

For she [Wisdom]is the brightness of eternal light, and the unspotted mirror of God’s majesty, and the image of his goodness. And being but one, she can do all things: and remaining in herself the same, she reneweth all things, and through nations conveyeth herself into holy souls, she maketh the friends of God and prophets. For God loveth none but him that dwelleth with wisdom. For she is more beautiful than the sun, and above all the order of the stars: being compared with the light, she is found before it. For after this cometh night, but no evil can overcome wisdom. [Wisdom 7:22 sqq.]​

In Proverbs we find a description of the coming Anointed One who ‘became’ man. Wisdom herself tells us who the man is in Proverbs 8, through whom all things were made:

The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his ways, before he made any thing from the beginning. I was set up from eternity, and of old before the earth was made. The depths were not as yet, and I was already conceived, neither had the fountains of waters as yet sprung out: The mountains with their huge bulk had not as yet been established: before the hills I was brought forth:

He had not yet made the earth, nor the rivers, nor the poles of the world. When he prepared the heavens, I was present: when with a certain law and compass he enclosed the depths: When he established the sky above, and poised the fountains of waters: When he compassed the sea with its bounds, and set a law to the waters that they should not pass their limits: when be balanced the foundations of the earth; I was with him forming all things: and was delighted every day, playing before him at all times [Proverbs 8:22 sqq.]​

The Wisdom of God comes forth from God in the likeness of the intellect that generates Wisdom. It is by God that all things through the expressed image of Himself, Jesus Christ. "The figure of His substance" is the expressed image of God the Father, i.e. His Son.

In these days hath spoken to us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the world. Who being the brightness of his glory, and the figure of his substance, and upholding all things by the word of his power, making purgation of sins, sitteth on the right hand of the majesty on high. [Hebrews 1:2-3]​

The reflective act of understanding the existence of His eternity awakens the concept of understanding Eternity in the form of wisdom. Thus the likeness of Eternity is the expression begotten as Wisdom. "And the 'Logos' [the mental concept of Word, i.e. Wisdom - not the audible or written word] was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we saw his glory, the glory as it were of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth." [John 1:14].

The Logos takes flesh, the begotten Son of God. One Divine Person with Divine nature and a human nature uniquely and inseparably united. From the Father and the Son comes the Holy Spirit. Three Persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit yet of One Substance, Eternity.



JoeT

 

It is quit customary for two young people to date, the object is to get to know each other before marriage. It may be that the two may not get along, it may be that one is not what he or she seems to be. In either case the courting is to 'know' who it is you are going to love and spend the rest of your life with.

You find this courting for fact finding foolish. Why do you need to know Jesus Christ, who He is, or how He came to be. Just foolishness. Then one day the two wake up and find themselves inexplicably joined to a demon. You find yourself waking to the realization that what you thought was divine, in fact something totally different than expected - you just jumped into bed with the first thing that came alone.

JoeT

 

Right you are:

The virgin has illustrious models to follow: the five wise virgins of Gospel of Matthew, Mary, and the famous Thecla, heroine of the Apocryphal Acts of Paul. Moreover, her bridegroom is not swayed by superficialities: 'Are you bereft of parents? You are not bereft of God. Come then, whether you are very rich or little known, whether you are poor or living from the work of your hands. Have courage, because the bridegroom Christ does not regard fading beauty...whether you are short or tall' (8, 105-9) [Susanna Elm, `Virgins of God’: The Making of Asceticism in Late Antiquity, 37]​

Thank you for pointing that out.

But you forgot the thread, is Jesus Christ begotten or made? How?

JoeT