Dear Editor,
As we ponder David Williams’ point about the Holy Spirit and love (Correspondence, from Matthew Mason’s September en) article in the July en, I think we need to ponder [Matthew’s] expression ‘the Father eternally begetting His Son’.
An eternally begotten Son is the creed I have followed. This seems subtly but importantly different from the Son being begotten through all time, i.e. eternally. Is an eternal action really what we believe about the Father’s relationship to the Son? And if God is love (which no-one is disputing) can the Spirit be that love? Part of the pondering we are invited into by David Williams.
Perhaps we can have shorter articles from Matthew and include a discussion or two to show us how to ponder what he says if they are going to be nuanced significantly differently from what en readers might be expecting? Thanks.
Yours sincerely,
Dr Sue Vaux Halliday (Senior Research Fellow in Business and Marketing at the Kirby Laing Centre for Public Theology, Cambridge) By email
Matthew Mason responds:
I’m always glad to provoke people to think about our glorious God, and never sad to be asked to re(cid:31)ect again on what I believe about Him, because He is utterly lovely.
When it comes to the doctrine of the Trinity, as David Williams spotted (Letters, September en), I am cheerfully Augustinian. But I also cheerfully recognise that there are other orthodox ways of speaking of the Spirit’s procession from the Father (and the Son).
With regards to the eternal begetting of the Son, the key word is ‘eternal’. It’s vital here that we strip away any sense of before or after in God’s life. I emphatically don’t think that the Father is begetting the Son ‘through all time’, because time is a reality that does not apply to God. (cid:30)is means that there’s no point in time at which the Son comes into existence (which is the big point that the Nicene Creed is seeking to secure when it says that the Son is eternally begotten of the Father). Equally, though, there is no point in time when the Father ceases to beget the Son (because there just is no change or succession in God’s life). (cid:30)at’s all I was seeking to convey in speaking of the Father eternally begetting His Son.
