Begotten Nature
By John Gavazzoni

We did not receive our essential nature by being created, but rather by being begotten. This truth traces to the origin of the Son of God. He is God's begotten Son. Whether you opt for the Greek manuscripts that read, ".....only begotten Son," or ".....uniquely begotten Son," the begotten aspect is biblically, apostolically, and theologically indisputable. Possibly the most important truth that the early church fathers decided must be clarified, was that the origin of God's Son was not by creation, but by generation---out of the loins and womb of the Divine Nature. The Son is Begotten, not created, was the emphatic theological stance of those early fathers of the faith. Sonship by creation would be, as I've written in a previous article, "Sonship, Pinocchio-style."

Though "the Christ, the Son of the living God," in being sent into this world, shared creaturehood with us all, His Being did not originate by being born in time of the virgin Mary. The origin of His Being, was within eternity, which Being suffered transference into the eons, in the incarnation, via the womb of a woman. The Son's incarnation is historical, His Being is non-historical, that is, He was begotten of God eternally, not at any point on a time line. He is at once, in the eternal moment, God's little Boy, and God's fully manifested Son. We have the eternal experience of being born of God. We have the eonian experience of being born again, or to draw out the fullest expanse of the Greek, as per Jonathan Mitchell: Being born back up again from above.

Within and by THE Son, we share His eternal begottenness. It is being taught that God created us as spirits. No, God birthed us as spirits. "That which is BORN of the Spirit, is spirit." God is (not the creator of spirits) but "the Father of spirits," within, and out from that eternally begotten primary Son. Creation FORMED spirit into matter; creation did NOT ORIGINATE spirit. Well, of course; God is uncreated Spirit, and as His sons, so are we. As all the children of Abraham, over many generations---as to the administration by which the Christ came into the world---were his children through Isaac, so it is that we all are children of God through the Greater Isaac, Christ, the Son, the singular Seed of God's reproduction of Himself as Family.

When the Son---with all humanity within Him---was sent from the eternal dimension into the eons by the incarnation, His Spirit-Being, while retaining Its Spirit essence, "became flesh, and dwelt among us." That flesh, that body-materiality in solidarity with all creation, was Spirit taking eonian form. As Richard Rohr has said, "material is spirit." Spirit did not cease to be Spirit by becoming flesh, but It did accept, according to the will of the Father, that eternal Spirit should experience and suffer the inherent vulnerabilities of creaturehood. At the core of this truth is the wonder that God did not cease to be God by the incarnation, neither did He cease to be Man by the resurrection. There is no intrinsic difference between spirituality and materiality, in fact, we must be so bold as to proclaim that for S(s)pirit to draw forth out of Its deepest depths all the wonders of Its glory, it was necessary that the Word become flesh. Wonder of wonders: the Word as flesh is Divine Glory fully unfolded, fully manifested.

Spirit is undergoing an eonian experience, by becoming eonian. In that dimension, often referred to as the space-time continuum, eternal Spirit suffers sin, death, sickness, pain, futility and even estrangement from Its own Spirit-essence, without eternal loss of that essence. He, Jesus, the eternal Word, became sin for us. He was tested in every manner as we are. But always keep in mind that God, while taking us though this earthly "Godyssey." (a very descriptive word coined by Eddie Browne to describe the journey as essentially God's, while taking us along with Him), retains His essential eternality. He is the God of heaven and earth, the God who straddles time and eternity. Jesus did say of Himself, while here on earth, "the Son, who IS in heaven."

Finally an important word of clarification: The new heaven and new earth, are the old heaven and old earth renewed by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The new heaven and new earth have always been within the old heaven and earth, as their essential nature, from which they have suffered estrangement and alienation, until the full power of the death and resurrection makes "all things new." All things are not discarded, they are made new; the are REnewed. The body in which Jesus bore our sins; the body in which He bore all creation's oldness, was the same body that came out of the tomb in the newness of life, incorruptible and immortal, and on the way to glorification.

DO NOT devalue the old. The old is the new on its Way to super-intensified glory. God's finest moment was when Jesus was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father. God looked down at the body of Jesus lying in the tomb, having borne all the oldness of death, and chose that summary body of death to receive the fullest infusion of glory in all of the divine administration.