Fireside Chat With John of Damascus

I’m reading John of Damascus and he’s dropping bars about the Holy Trinity (we won’t talk about the filioque part). He writes about the eternal generation of God the Son like this:

The holy catholic and apostolic Church, then, teaches the existence at once of a Father and of His Only-begotten Son…just as we recognize the existence at once of fire and the light which proceeds from it: for there is not first fire and thereafter light, but they exist together. And just as light is ever the product of fire, and ever is in it and at no time is separate from it, so in like manner also the Son is begotten of the Father and is never in any way separate from Him, but ever is in Him.

And so God the Father and God the Son are One. The Son exists with and from the Father in one eternal generation of the divine nature that has simply always been. He is the necessary radiance of the Father’s glory. He is also the one who became one of us and died for our sins because he loves us very much.