@slimboyfat
This idea—which you mention as
possibly originating with Tertullian—is not only speculative but ultimately rejected by the very
trajectory of Christian theology. While Tertullian may have
spoken imperfectly about the divine persons (before the technical vocabulary of
homoousios, persona, natura was fully clarified), he did not intend to deny the eternal
generation of the Son. In fact, in Adversus Praxean, he says:
"The
Son is always in the Father...and the Father is not without the Son."
Even
if he hesitantly used temporal-sounding terms (as many did before Nicaea), the Nicene Creed clarified what the Church
had always believed implicitly: that the Father is eternally
Father by the eternal generation of the Son
(see ST I, q.27–28). For God to be
eternally love (1 Jn 4:8), there must eternally be the beloved. A Father without a Son
is either not really Father, or not eternal.
“In
God, generation is eternal, not temporal, since God is outside time.” – ST I, q.27, a.2
Thus,
to say “there was a time when God was not
Father” is to introduce change in the divine nature, which
violates God’s immutability
(ST I, q.9, a.1), a dogma
affirmed by Scripture itself (Mal 3:6; James 1:17).
You argue that because in human
experience the father precedes the son, the divine Son must be temporally posterior to the Father.
But this is a category error. Scripture uses analogical language—not univocal. When God is called
"Father," it does not imply biological or temporal priority, but a relational distinction
within the divine nature. Thomas Aquinas is very clear:
“The
name ‘Father’ is a personal name in God and signifies relation only, not
substance or time.” – ST
I, q.33, a.1
If
we were to take the analogy univocally, we would have to ascribe biological sex
and procreation to God—clearly absurd. Rather, the title “Father” reveals eternal origin without temporal beginning.
The Son is eternally begotten, not
created. No time exists between Father and Son,
as there is no succession in God. Any attempt to apply temporal categories to
divine relations leads to error.
You cite Proverbs 8:22 as evidence that the
Son (as Wisdom) was created. First, the Hebrew term qanah (“The Lord possessed me…”) does not
necessarily mean “created.”
It can mean “possess,” “acquire,” or “beget,” depending on context. The Greek Septuagint
translation uses ἔκτισέν
με (“He
created me”), but the Church Fathers—like Athanasius and Augustine—insisted this
refers to the human nature of Christ or a poetic personification of Wisdom,
not His divine nature. Athanasius answers this objection directly in Contra Arianos:
“The
Lord created me not as Word or Wisdom, but as a man.” (CA, II.44)
This verse does not refer to the pre-incarnate Christ in any
ontological sense. While early Christian interpreters did draw parallels between
Wisdom in Proverbs 8 and the Logos, the Hebrew word in question here is qanah,
which most often means “to possess,” not “to create.” For example, qanah is used in Genesis
14:19 (“possessor of heaven and earth”), not “creator.” Moreover, the
Septuagint’s use of ektise
(from ktizō)—“created”—was an
unfortunate translation that fueled misunderstanding but does not reflect the
full semantic range of qanah. Church Fathers like Athanasius and Augustine
explicitly rejected the idea that this passage teaches the creation of the
Logos, insisting that Proverbs 8 refers typologically or poetically to Wisdom,
not literally to the divine Logos in His essence.
Moreover,
John 1:3 clearly states:
“Through
Him all things were made… and without Him nothing was made that has been made.”
Thus,
the Son (Logos) cannot
be among created things. He is the instrumental principle of all creation,
including time itself.
The language of Colossians 1:15 is
misunderstood. “Firstborn” (prototokos) is not the same as “first-created” (protoktistos). The Greek term
carries the connotation of preeminence, not origin in time. Paul is using a Jewish idiom (cf. Psalm
89:27) where “firstborn” means status of honor:
“I
will make him the firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth.” (Ps 89:27)
Paul
immediately explains in Col 1:16:
“For
in Him all things were created…”
How can the Son be a creature if all things were created through Him? He is called ‘firstborn’ not
because He is a creature, but because He is the preeminent one over creatures. The genitive construction is not partitive (“firstborn of creation” as one among
others), but relational
or even superlative (“firstborn over all creation”). As D.B.
Wallace and others show, this is a genitive of subordination, not inclusion.
The Greek word arche in Revelation 3:14 does
not mean “first in time” here but principle, source, or origin—just as in John 1:1 (“In the beginning…”).
Christ is the arche of creation because He
is the uncreated Logos through whom all
things were made, not the first product of creation. Jesus is
called the beginning (arche)
in the sense that He is the originating principle, not part of the creation. The word archē in Johannine usage often denotes source or ruler (cf. John
1:1; Rev. 21:6). In Revelation, Christ also calls Himself “the Alpha and the
Omega” and “the Beginning and the End” (Rev 22:13), expressions of eternity and authority,
not created status. Church Fathers like Athanasius, Augustine, and Gregory of Nyssa
uniformly read this as referring to Christ as the originator, not as a creature.
In fact, if Jesus were merely the first thing created, the phrase “of God’s
creation” would be redundant. But calling Him the “archē” emphasizes that through Him creation
began.
John 1:1a asserts the eternity of the Word, not His creation. The Greek
does not say “from the
beginning came to be the Word,” but rather “ēn ho Logos”—the Word was—implying timeless existence. It uses the imperfect tense of to be
(ēn), denoting continual, ongoing existence. Meanwhile, in John 1:3, panta di’autou egeneto (“all
things were made through him”) confirms that the Logos is not part of the “all
things” that came into being. If the Word existed before creation and was the
instrument through which all things were created, then He Himself is uncreated.
This is reinforced by the deliberate contrast in Greek between ēn (He “was”) and egeneto (things “came into
being”).
1 Corinthians 11:3 does not imply inequality of nature, but
order of relation. Christ
is eternally from
the Father (ex Patre), not in rank or
value, but in origin. Just as in the Trinity, the Son proceeds from the Father
without inequality. Subordination according to origin does not imply inequality
of essence. The same passage says “man is the head of woman.” Does that imply
women are ontologically inferior? No. It refers to a relational ordering, not a
difference in dignity or essence.
John 6:57 refers to the eternal generation of the
Son: the Son receives His being from the Father—not temporally, but eternally.
In scholastic terms, He proceeds by eternal intellectual generation, not by will or
creation (ST I, q.27, a.2). Thus, the
Son’s life from the Father affirms divine unity, not
subordinationism. The Son is consubstantial (homoousios) with the Father. One being, three persons. This verse actually affirms the divine nature of the Son. The
Father grants the Son to have “life in Himself”—a uniquely divine attribute,
since only God has self-existent
life (aseity). The phrase refers to
the eternal generation of the Son, not a created origin. The Son does not
derive life in time, but eternally receives it from the Father as His eternal
source in the Trinity. This is about relation, not chronology. St. Athanasius famously
explained that this granting of life is not an act of creation, but a theological
affirmation of the Son’s eternal generation and divine consubstantiality.
The idea that these verses are “odd language” if Christ is
not created presumes a modern, literalist lens and fails to appreciate the
linguistic, cultural, and theological
contexts in which the biblical authors wrote. The Fathers of
the Church, many of whom were native Greek speakers, uniformly interpreted
these passages in light of Christ’s eternal generation, not His creation. The eternal
Son is begotten, not made (γεννηθέντα, οὐ ποιηθέντα), as
the Nicene Creed affirms. The “odd language” only seems problematic when one
presupposes a unitarian metaphysic foreign to the New Testament witness.
Why then do “ordinary Christians” (?)
think Jesus was "created"? Because orthodox doctrine is deep, mysterious, and demands both faith and
theological formation. The early heresies—especially
Arianism—were attractive because they were simpler and more humanly
intuitive. But as Chesterton quipped, “The Church is a living teacher, not a dead leaf blown about by the
winds of opinion.”
You rightly affirm that God does not
need creation. But if God is love by nature (1 John 4:8), and love by definition
implies a beloved, then either God
was not love before creation, or God is
eternally love within Himself = Trinity. This is not strained philosophy, but
the only coherent account that avoids:
- Temporality in God (change from not-loving to
loving),
- Contingency in
God’s perfection (love dependent on creation),
- Denial of God’s
essential relation and communication.
As
Augustine said:
“There is the Lover, the Beloved, and the
Love.” (De
Trinitate)
Only
a Trinity makes sense of the eternal love of God within Himself, apart from
creation. Creation is not the cause of God’s love, but the overflow of it.
To sum up, the Nicene faith is not
an “innovation” but the faith once delivered to the saints (Jude 1:3),
clarified under pressure from heresy. To affirm:
- God is immutable (Mal 3:6),
- God is love (1 Jn 4:8),
- Christ is God (John 1:1, 20:28),
- The Spirit is personal and divine (Acts 5:3–4),
is
to affirm what only Trinitarian theology can coherently hold together. To deny the Trinity is to make God either changeable, needy, or
loveless. None of these are acceptable for the God of Abraham,
of Scripture, or of reason.
“It
is impossible to believe explicitly in the mystery of Christ without faith in
the Trinity.”
– ST II-II, q.2, a.8
The Trinity is
not a burden on Christian theology—it is its crown.
