By: The Rev. Lee Nelson
What does it mean to say that Jesus is begotten? What do we mean when we say in the Creed, “the only-begotten Son of God.”? C.S. Lewis had this to say in his book Mere Christianity:
“To beget is to become the father of: to create is to make. And the difference is this. When you beget, you beget something of the same kind as yourself. A man begets human babies, a beaver begets little beavers and a bird begets eggs which turn into little birds. But when you make, you make something of a different kind from yourself. A bird makes a nest, a beaver builds a dam, a man makes a wireless set-or he may make something more like himself than a wireless set: say, a statue. If he is a clever enough carver he may make a statue which is very like a man indeed. But, of course, it is not a real man; it only looks like one. It cannot breathe or think. It is not alive.
Now that is the first thing to get clear. What God begets is God; just as what man begets is man. What God creates is not God, just as what man creates is not man.”
Yet, there is an exception to that rule! What man and woman “make” in procreation is of the same nature as they themselves. Babies are human beings, just as their parents are.
Why? Because God himself joins in this act of bringing new life into being. This is what our culture has readily forgotten or knowingly cast aside. The Church proclaims the truth that when an embryo is conceived in the womb, that is a human life, and it is so because
God has ordained it to be so. You and I are made by God and begotten by our parents.
That being the case, we cannot look upon human life in the womb, or any life at all, as anything less than what we ourselves are. What an opportunity to remind the Church of not only the divine and human natures of Jesus Christ, which give him an eternal status as High Priest, but of our own status as human beings created in the image of God!