Exposition of the Orthodox Faith by Saint John of Damascus

[Benedict]

Reflection on Chapter 8 part 2
Beauty beyond sight! Voice without sound! True Brightness, True Light, True Life! Holy God, hear our prayers!
We believe in the One and the Only-begotten Son of God, our Lord, Jesus Christ: begotten of the Father, before all the ages: Light of Light, true God of true God:
Jesus Christ, the Only-Begotten Son of God, who is Lord and Savior and Redeemer: Begotten of the Father's substance before all ages, the Divine Expression of the Pure Mind of God, Light from Light, True God from True God:
Begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father, through Him all things are made:
When we say He was before all the ages we shew that His birth is without time or beginning we speak of the ineffable generation of the Word of God in the Perfect Mind of God the Father:  
Ineffably begotten, not made, of one essence or substance with the Father and the Holy Spirit, being the Word of God, all things were made through Him:
We say that He eternally Was, and forever Is, and always Will Be, being Eternal from the Eternal, for we say that He was before all ages we express that His generation or "birth" is without time or beginning.
For we do not say that there ever was a time when the Son was not, nor was there ever a time when the Father did not produce the Holy Spirit, for the Trinity is eternally unchanging, immutably rooted in the simplicity and eternity of the Godhead.
The Only-begotten Son of God was not brought into being or created out of nothingness, for Jesus Christ, the Word of God is the effulgence of the glory of the Father, the impress of the Father, the image of the Invisible God.
For God always possessed Wisdom and did not require time to come to a conclusion nor did God need to consider, for those who consider do not know, but God being the Prime Knower, knew prior to the existence of what was known:
This Primal Wisdom generated the Divine Expression and the Divine Expression of Primal Wisdom acted out the Holy Will of God creating heaven and earth and all things in them.
Jesus Christ, the Only-begotten Son of God and Word of God is the Virtue and Wisdom of the living God, the Truth and Light of God, the Christ and Gift of the Father, existing within the Holy Trinity while possessing Divine Personhood..
The Word possessed interior subsistence or personhood, distinguishable from God, being from God, but undivided from the Godhead, being one in substance and eternally united to the Father and the Holy Spirit in Supreme Unity without confusion or dissolution of the persons.
The Word is the essential and living image of the unseen God, the power of God to act via fiat, for God thinks, and His thought is spoken and His Word is accomplished without any delay between, thought, speech and action,
for it is the supreme omnipotence of God to directly will and to accomplish without fail His divine will. For the Word and the Holy Spirit are of the same will as God whom they have their being from.
Jesus Christ is the essential and perfect and living image of the unseen God.
The Word is always with the Father and the Holy Spirit and in the Father and the Holy Spirit and the Father and the Holy Spirit are always with and in the Word.
Jesus who is the Beginning and the End is from the Beginningless and the Endless One.
The Word is eternal and begotten of the Father, who is the Father of Lights, the Father of Truth, the Father of Love, the Father of Peace, the Father of Goodness, the Father of Beauty, the Father of all Divine Attributes.
There never was a time when the Father was and the Son was not, nor a time when the Father was and the Holy Spirit was not, nor a time when the Father and the Son were but the Holy Spirit was not.
Nor was there a time when the Spirit did not proceed from the Father nor a time when the Spirit did not dwell within the Word.
For there was always the Father and always the Son and always the Holy Spirit: the Word was begotten of the Father, existed together with the Father and the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit was produced by the Father and existed together with the Father and the Son.
The Father could not be called Father without the Son; for a parent without offspring is no parent at all.
For the Father could not have received the name Father apart from the Son: for if Father were without the Son, He could not be the Father:
Neither do we impiously say that Christ was adopted at His baptism, for Christ Jesus, the Word of God made flesh, was truly the Son of the Father even prior to the Incarnation.
And if we say that Jesus Christ thereafter became the Son of the Father, thereafter the Father became the Father, not having been the Father prior to this, and God was changed from that which was not the Father and became the Father.
And if the Father at some point later had the Son, then the Father became the Father, not having been the Father prior to this, and then we introduce into God change from He who was was not the Father and became the Father.
This is the worst form of blasphemy to introduce change into the Immutable Godhead.

[Benedict]

Chapter 8 reflection part 3
All praise be to God! All Glory be to God! All thanksgiving be to God! O ineffable One! Thee we acclaim! Thee do we worship! Father, Son and Holy Spirit! The Undivided Trinity and Supreme Unity: whom Angels adore and Saints proclaim!
We may not speak of God as lacking anything nor does God lack natural generative power: and generative power means, the power of producing from one’s self.
For it is the nature of a natural father and mother to generate with mutual cooperation, a child, thus God, who is greater than all things, who needed no cooperator, generated the Son ineffably before all ages.
God being independent of the necessity of the natural union of two complementary genders because He is incorporeal but also because He is the one and only God, and stands in need of no co-operation:
When we speak of generation we speak of production from one’s own proper essence, that which is like in nature to one’s self.
Generation means that the begetter produces out of his essence offspring similar in essence.
For a deer begets a deer, a fish begets a fish, a man begets a man, and True God begets True God; True Light begets True Light; hence why we say Light from Light, True God from True God, begotten, not made, One in Essence with the Father
Concerning the generation of the Son, it is an act of impiety to say that time comes into play and and it is foolishness to insist that the existence of the Son's origin is later in time than that the of Father who is without beginning.
For the Son is the Beginning from the Beginning, the Father who is beginning less is the beginning of the Son and the Father is without origin in time.
For we hold that it is from God, that is, from the Father’s nature, that the Son is generated and it is from the Father's nature that the Holy Spirit is produced and proceeds, from the Father and received through the Son, in whom the Spirit lives and abides in love and wisdom. 
We profess that the Son co-existed from the beginning with the Father, by Whom He was begotten.
We deny any attempt to introduce change into the Father’s person, because then by foolishness we would insist wrongly, that God not being the Father, He subsequently became the Father.
Furthermore God's creation, even though it originated later, is nevertheless not derived from the essence of God as some fools have speculated.
God's creation is brought into existence out of nothing by God's will and power, and does not introduce change into God nor touch or affect God’s nature.
But creation and making mean that the creator and maker produces from that which is external, and not out of his own essence, a creation of an absolutely dissimilar nature.
Wherefore in God, Who alone is passionless and unalterable, and immutable, and ever so continueth, both begetting and creating are passionless.
God is perfect in glory and in peace, all His works declare His glory and those who trust in God He rewards with His presence and peace.
God is without end, never ceasing to act or to be because He is without beginning, or time, or end, and ever continues the same.
For that which has no beginning has no end: but that which through grace is endless is assuredly not without beginning, as, witness, the angels who have no end but began in time.
Accordingly the everlasting God generates His own Word which is perfect, without beginning and without end, that God who is One and Holy, Whose nature and existence are above time, may not beget in time.
But with man clearly it is otherwise, for generation is with him a matter of sex, and destruction and flux and increase and body clothe him round about , and he possesses a nature which is male or female.
For it is certain that the male requires the assistance of the female to bear his child.
But may God, our Father Who surpasses all, and transcends all thought and comprehension, be gracious to us and grant to us the Eternal Kingdom where we may dwell with the Lord Christ Jesus, in the Holy Spirit. Amen

[Benedict]

Chapter 8 reflection part 4
Undivided Trinity, Supreme Unity, All-Holy One Who surpasses all, and transcends all thought and comprehension, be gracious to us and shine Thy Light upon our hearts and minds and souls that we may ascend to Thee.
The holy catholic and apostolic Church, then, teaches the existence at once of One God the Father Almighty: and of One Lord Jesus Christ His Only-begotten Son, who is the Word of God born of the Father before all ages.
The Son was born prior to the creation of the universe and thus we say that it He is eternally begotten and thus always existed with the Father being without time and without flux and without passion.
Truly in an unspeakable mystery and in a manner incomprehensible and perceived by the God of the universe alone:
the Word of God was generated without delay by the Supreme Mind and uttered without delay by the Supreme Voice
The eye recognises the existence at once of fire and the light which proceeds from it: and the hand cannot see the fire but feels the warmth which proceeds from the fire
for there is not first fire and thereafter light, nor is there fire and thereafter heat but they exist together as one reality, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
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.
But whereas the light which is produced from fire without separation, and abides ever in it, has no proper person of its own distinct from that of fire (for it is a natural quality of fire to produce light),
Our Lord Jesus Christ the Only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father without separation and difference and ever abiding in Him, has a proper subsistence of its own distinct from that of the Father.
For the Son has received all from the Father except that of being the Father and thus the Father and the Son are distinct in their persons but united in will and essence.

[Benedict]

CHAPTER IX
 CONCERNING WHAT IS AFFIRMED ABOUT GOD
The Deity is simple and uncompound. But that which is composed of many and different elements is compound.
If, then, we should speak of the qualities of being uncreate and without beginning and incorporeal and immortal and everlasting and good and creative and so forth as essential differences in the case of God, that which is composed of so many qualities will not be simple but must be compound. But this is impious in the extreme.
Each then of the affirmations about God should be thought of as signifying not what He is in essence,
but either something that it is impossible to make plain, or some relation to some of those things which are contrasts or some of those things that follow the nature, or an energy .
It appears then that the most proper of all the names given to God is “He that is,” as He Himself said in answer to Moses on the mountain,
Say to the sons of Israel, He that is hath sent Me . For He keeps all being in His own embrace , like a sea of essence infinite and unseen.
Or as the holy Dionysius says, “He that is good .” For one cannot say of God that He has being in the first place and goodness in the second.
The second name of God is ho Theos, derived from theein , to run, because He courses through all things, or from aithein, to burn:
For God is a fire consuming all evil : or from theasthai, because He is all-seeing : for nothing can escape Him, and over all He keepeth watch.
For He saw all things before they were, holding them timelessly in His thoughts;
 and each one conformably to His voluntary and timeless thought, which constitutes predetermination and image and pattern, comes into existence at the predetermined time .
The first name then conveys the notion of His existence and of the nature of His existence: while the second contains the idea of energy.
Further, the terms without beginning,’ incorruptible,’ unbegotten,’ as also uncreate,’ incorporeal,’ unseen,’ and so forth, explain what He is not:
 that is to say, they tell us that His being had no beginning, that He is not corruptible, nor created, nor corporeal, nor visible .
Again, goodness and justice and piety and such like names belong to the nature , but do not explain His actual essence.
Finally, Lord and King and names of that class indicate a relationship with their contrasts:
for the name Lord has reference to those over whom the lord rules,
and the name King to those under kingly authority,
and the name Creator to the creatures,
and the name Shepherd to the sheep he tends.

[Benedict]

CHAPTER X
 CONCERNING DIVINE UNION AND SEPARATION
Therefore all these names must be understood as common to the Godhead as a whole, and as containing the notions of sameness and simplicity and indivisibility and union: while the names Father, Son and Spirit, and causeless and caused, and unbegotten and begotten, and procession contain the idea of separation: for these terms do not explain His essence, but the mutual relationship and manner of existence .
When, then, we have perceived these things and are conducted from these to the divine essence, we do not apprehend the essence itself but only the attributes of the essence: just as we have not apprehended the essence of the soul even when we have learnt that it is incorporeal and without magnitude and form: nor again, the essence of the body when we know that it is white or black, but only the attributes of the essence.
Further, the true doctrine teacheth that the Godhead is simple and has one simple energy, good and energising in all things, just as the sun’s ray, which warms all things and energises in each in harmony with its natural aptitude and receptive power, having obtained this form of energy from God, its Maker.
But quite distinct is all that pertains to the divine and benignant incarnation of the divine Word. For in that neither the Father nor the Spirit have any part at all, unless so far as regards approval and the working of inexplicable miracles which the God-Word, having become man like us, worked, as unchangeable God and son of God .