Begotten means to be created, the Word was not created.
It is those who teach an 'eternally begotten Son' that are teaching Arianism.
The Word was never begotten.
I’ll be out the rest of the day so I won’t be able to reply.
Are you saying that the second person of the Trinity only became the Son of God at his incarnation. Apart from the incarnation he was still God, but not the Son, just the second Person?
That's explicitly not what "eternally begotten" means. It is those who teach an 'eternally begotten Son' that are teaching Arianism.
So, in other words, you're asking me to believe that the council called to refute Arianism ended up endorsing it? The Arians sure didn't see it that way. Neither do any church historians that I know.
God the Son is eternally God the Son, and always has been: uncreated divinity, one in substance with the Father. God in his essence is unchangeable.
NO! You have it in reverse. We say Begotten not made. It does not mean created! Or Made!
Such a mind was Arius(Arianism), who proposed, instead, that Jesus was a sort of godlet, not God with a capital “G.”
He preached that Jesus was sort of like a super archangel: greater than all other creatures (and so, “divine” in comparison with the rest of creation), but not actually God. This seems abstract, but it actually constituted an assault on the most fundamental basics of the Christian faith, because if Jesus is not God, he can neither save nor give eternal life (that is, the life of God) to us.
The Council of Nicaea, in resolving the controversy, insists (following St. John) that Christ is “begotten, not made.” Why? For the same reason we insist that our children are not the same as statues.
An artist makes a statue; he begets a son. To beget is to share your nature with another being. God made human beings. But God the Father begets the Son eternally. The Son shares his Father’s nature. And since the nature of the Father is to have no beginning, the Son also has no beginning. He is begotten from all eternity by the Father. In him is eternal life from the Father, and, therefore, he can share that life with us creatures.
For eternal life originates only in God, not in creatures.
The eternity of Christ is a stunning thing to contemplate: that this manual laborer who stands before us with dirty feet, calloused hands, and a rough up-country accent is, in fact, the Being who has existed from all eternity in the blinding light of the heart of God, sharing completely in his glory and showing forth the express image of the Holy One who hurled all the galaxies into being.
It is rather a lot to take in.
It’s no wonder the Son “emptied himself,” as Paul says, becoming human and dimming his splendor so that we could see him with our mortal eyes. And yet, even dimmed, he remains the Light of the world.
When you look at the sun, do you see the sun or the light from the sun? Obviously, to do the one is to do the other. Christianity says the same thing is happening when you look at Christ. If you’ve seen the Son, you’ve seen the Father, for the Son is the exact representation of the Father, just as sunlight carries with it the exact representation of the sun from which it came. That is why the creed calls Jesus “Light from Light.”
http://www.ncregister.com/site/article/17439/