The Narrow Path Ministries

Certainly, our finite minds can not fully grasp the mystery of the eternal God (as the famous "sea shell" story about St. Augustine shows: Augustine saw a boy trying to scoop the entire ocean with a sea shell and place it into a small hole in the beach; when Augustine told the boy that is impossible, the boy said that his efforts to do so is more possible than Augustine's efforts to perfectly understand the infinite Mystery of the Trinity with his finite intellect! See: http://olmlaycarmelites.org/reflections/mystery-trinity) Alas, we do our best to grasp what we can in this life so that we might deepen our faith, understanding, and love of God.

I think it is important to understand that "eternal", strictly speaking, does not simply mean "everlasting"; but, rather, it means "being outside of time". As Paidion rightly pointed out, time is a measurement of motion (the Philospher, Aristotle, gave, I think, the most perfect definition of time by saying it is the "number of motion according to before and after"). Whenever there is any kind of movement of matter, there is time.

But, God is devoid of all matter; He is purely spiritual and eternal-- outside of time. Thus, His-- the Father's-- begetting of the Son is an ETERNAL generation; He eternally begets His Son (this is a generation that occurs from all eternity, outside of time). When ancient Councils declared that there was never a "time" in which the Son did not exist, what is meant by such formulations is that the Son, with His Father, is ALSO eternal (these Councils did not mean to say that time began with the generation of the Son; rather, the generation of the Son, again, is an eternal generation, completely outside of time, and, thus, the Son is eternal, too). Among other revelations in Scripture which show that the Son, too, is eternal, we have Christ's words, "Before Abraham was, I AM."

Christ, of course, is giving Himself the Divine Name which God gave to Moses in Exodus-- thus, showing that the God that spoke to Moses and Christ are one and the same God-- which is why those to whom Christ spoke wanted to stone Him here; and, the reason why God, in both Exodus and in Christ's words, refers to Himself as, "I AM", is because God is ETERNAL-- He lives in the "everlasting present"; there is no time in God. He simply IS. There is no before, nor after, with God...there is only NOW-- the eternal present. Thus, His name is, "I AM". That Christ says, "I AM", shows He is eternal, with His Father.

In Christ, the Eternal Son of the Eternal Father,
BrotherAlan

Brother Alan, to me the concept of existence outside time is nonsense. If there is existence outside of time, there would be no events.
Thus if God had existed/does exist outside of time then there would be no mental events within God—no thoughts or any kind.

Brother Alan, you say “of course” Christ gave Himself the divine name, but that’s not so obvious and is not necessarily the case regardless of the nature of Christ’s divinity. There are many strong disputations against the divine relevance of the so-called “I Am” passages (even among trinitarians).


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darinhouston wrote: ↑

Wed Jun 12, 2019 1:31 pm

Brother Alan, you say “of course” Christ gave Himself the divine name, but that’s not so obvious and is not necessarily the case regardless of the nature of Christ’s divinity. There are many strong disputations against the divine relevance of the so-called “I Am” passages (even among trinitarians).


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This thread on John 8:58 and "Before Abraham was, I am" has been moved to its own topic.