The Son of God is the Word of the Father in thought and actuality. By him and through him all things were made, the Father and the Son being one. Since the Son is in the Father and the Father is in the Son by the unity and power of the Spirit, the Mind and Word of the Father is the Son of God. And if, in your exceedingly great wisdom, it occurs to you to inquire what is meant by ‘the Son,’ I will tell you briefly: He is the first-begotten of the Father, not as having been produced, for from the beginning God had the Word in himself, God being eternal mind and eternally rational, but as coming forth [from the Father] to be the model and energizing force of all material things.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Eternal rationality of the eternal mind.
So I've been steadily working through Cotton Mather, which is a lot easier when one doesn't have a full class load and a job and extra-curriculars (who would have thought?). Somewhere in his commentary on the book of John, Mather refers to Athenagorus, a 2nd-century writer from the early church. He briefly notes the phrase "eternally rational," whose implications delighted me. I found the context online, and I don't know if I know exactly what he's trying to get at, but I love how he does it.
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2 comments:
Funny. Something extremely similar popped up in some reading I did yesterday:
If the Son is in the Father and the Father and the Son are one, then what do we make of Luke 2:52? "And Jesus kept increasing in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men." (NASB) If Jesus is in the Father, and the Father is omniscient, wouldn't that entail Jesus being omniscient? But, how can he grow in wisdom if he was already omniscient? (The article was discussing the presence of evil, among other things.)
Anyway. Tangent ended.
Could wisdom be a material thing that we can grow into, like our bodies (stature)? Maybe not just emotions, but rationality as well, is entirely physiological . . .
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