For when he says, "That which was from the beginning," he touches upon the generation without beginning of the Son, who is co-existent with the Father. There was[,] then, a Word importing an unbeginning eternity; as also the Word itself, that is, the Son of God, who being, by equality of substance, one with the Father, is eternal and uncreate.
St. Clement of Alexandria (d. circa 215)
Commentary on 1 John
5 comments:
Christianity can be as abstract as abstract art or even pure mathematics. That's one of the things I love about it. I think Clement was elaborating on John 1.1: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. (The abstract painting of faith, and how musical.)
When I was in graduate school, I use to enjoy reading Origen, who was one of my favorite of the early Church fathers (others being Irenaeus and Eusebius).
Hi Samuel,
Thanks for dropping by. May I ask what you studied in grad school?
Salam.
I waited until after undergraduate school to read Origen, but I have to admit that I was quite taken by him. He too held to the eternal generation of the Son, a concept I follow up on here.
I trudged through St. Thomas Aquinas (it's brilliant, but his Q&A structure gets tedious after a while) while pursuing my degree in Mechanical Engineering. I found the two complementary; St. Thomas taught me how to think. (Arnauld and Nicole came later.) I also took Logic as well, where I was told this.
Hi Abu Daoud, I studied for my phd in mathematics, but I also studied other things of interest like physics (quantum theory, relativity) as well as early church history (where my interest in the fathers was stimulated).
The one thing about Origen that i kind of connected with was his 'abstract' sense and approach for theological matters; I found this to be similar to mathematical abstractions. This was a long time ago and I don't even remember what I read of him (but i suppose it can come back if I go back to reading him again).
I have not been an Aquinas reader; sad to say, I never got around to reading him. I have however read about half of Augustine's Confessions (which I could identify with in many places) and Pascal's Pensees (which has a more mathematical bent on things that I could relate to). (I read a fair bit of stuff on Christianity over the years, from fundamentalist literature to modern day critical Biblical scholarship---and I am an avid fan (but critical as well) of TV documentaries on such topics.)
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