If time came before me, time is not before the Word, whose Begetter is atemporal. When the beginningless Father was there, leaving nothing superior to His divinity, then also was there the Father's Son, having in the Father a timeless beginning, like the sun's great circle of overwhelming clear light.
The Son is 'Life' (Jn. 14:6) because He is 'Light', constituting and giving reality to every thinking being. 'For in Him we live, move and exist' (Acts 17:28) and there is a two-fold sense in which He breathes into us (cf. Gen. 2:7; Jn. 20:22); we are filled, all of us, with His breath, and those who are capable of it, all those who open their mind's mouth wide enough, with His Holy Spirit.
How is it... that the Son and Holy Spirit are not co-unoriginate with the Father, if they are co-eternal with Him? Because they are from Him, though not after Him. 'Being unoriginate' necessarily implies 'being eternal,' but 'being eternal' does not entail 'being unoriginate,' so long as the Father is referred to as origin. So because They have a cause They are not unoriginate... a cause is not necessarily prior to its effects... Because time is not involved, They are to that extent unoriginate... for the sources of time are not subject to time.
Can anyone be a father without beginning to be one? Yes, one who did not begin his existence. What begins to exist begins to be a father - God the Father did not begin at all. He is Father in the true sense, because He is not a son as well. Just as the Son is son in the true sense, because He is not a father as well. In our case, the word 'father' cannot be truly appropriate, because we must be fathers and sons.
