Eternal Father

“ All that the Eternal Father teaches and reveals is His being, His nature, and His Godhead, which He manifests to us in His Son, and teaches us that we are also His Son. ”

“ Each Person of the Blessed Trinity has some special relation to us, and there are, therefore, special acts of love and adoration which we can pay to each. He has revealed himself to us as the Father, not only as the Father of the Eternal Son, but as our Father as well; our Father, because he has adopted us as his children. Nothing that we know on earth of a father's love can compare with the tenderness with which the Eternal Father regards his children. ”

“ It is redolent of the love and mercy of the Eternal Father, and bears the sweet perfume of charity and gratitude of the children reaching out after the fathers, of the fathers blest in the works of the children, and of kindred affection enlarged, cemented and perpetuated for ever and ever. ”

“ This Father of ours has in the past eternities trod through time and space, learning,—yes, suffering, overcoming, conquering, becoming perfect, until now He sits in the midst of glory, power, and eternal lives. ”

“ THE Eternal Son is the perfect and final expression of the "first" personal and absolute concept of the Universal Father. Accordingly, whenever and however the Father personally and absolutely expresses himself, he does so through his Eternal Son, who ever has been, now is, and ever will be, the living and divine Word. And this Eternal Son is residential at the center of all things, in association with, and immediately enshrouding the personal presence of, the Eternal and Universal Father. ”

“ Men who live valiantly and die nobly have a strength and a courage from the eternal Father. ”

“ Such a creature knows the life of the infinite Father as the very flame of his life, and joys that nothing is done or will be done in the universe in which the Father will not make him all of a sharer that it is possible for perfect generosity to make him. If you say this is irreverent, I doubt if you have seen the God manifest in Jesus. But all will be well, for the little god of your poor content will starve your soul to misery, and the terror of the eternal death creeping upon you, will compel you to seek a perfect father. ”

“ The Holy Spirit gives life, not in a different way from the Father and the Son, nor by a different working.
29. And what wonder is it the Spirit works Life, Who quickens as does the Father and as does the Son? And who can deny that quickening is the work of the Eternal Majesty? ”

“ To have eternal life. Eternal life took death upon itself; eternal life willed to die; but of thee, not of itself; of thee it received that whereby it may die in thy behalf. Of men, indeed, He took flesh, but yet not in the manner of men. For having His Father in heaven, He chose a mother on earth ”

“ He was born according to man in the flesh, and why not his younger brethren have a similar birth with him in the spirit?
But now this carries us back still further, and invites us to ascertain a little in relation to his Father. A great many have supposed that God the Eternal Father, whom we worship in connection with his Son, Jesus Christ, was always a self-existing, eternal being from all eternity, that he had no beginning as a personage. But in order to illustrate this, let us inquire, What is our destiny? If we are now the sons and daughters of God, what will be our future destiny? ”

“ The Father comes down to you as a personality only through the divine Sons of the Eternal Son. And you attain the Father by this same living way; you ascend to the Father by the guidance of this group of divine Sons. ”

“ Eternity is often, too, looked upon as peculiarly of the Father, though naturally it is common to the Trinity. Note how frequently in the liturgical prayers of the Church comes the expression, "O, Eternal Father." So again to the Son we attribute Wisdom and Beauty, turning in our imagination to Him as the Word of God, the Figure of His substance, the brightness of His glory, and to the Holy Spirit we more often attribute God's love and God's joy. All these attributions are attempts to make that high mystery and the Three Persons of It alive and distinctive to the human spirit. ”

“ Concerning His intention towards others who may seem to have passed away without hearing of His love, or who are living as though no loving message of glad tidings had ever been proclaimed, we must rest in ignorance, only assured that the Eternal God is as truly their Father as we know Him to be ours. ”

“ There in the brilliance of eternal glory, the Son of God sat at the right hand of His Father, not having as yet assumed the nature of man; in the fulness of time the Father sent Him into the world to become man and to die upon the cross. ”

“ Does not the Father of all living conduct himself in this wise towards his children? He has revealed to us that he will prepare us for glory, for life eternal,—will preserve our identity for ever, if we will be guided by him. ”

“ If I have shown you a father beginning, and a son at the same time beginning, believe the Father not beginning, and with Him the Son not beginning either; the one eternal, the other coeternal. If ye get on with your learning, ye understand: take pains to get on. The being born, ye have; but also the growing, ye ought to have; because no man begins with being perfect. As for the Son of God, indeed, He could be born perfect, because He was begotten without time, coeternal with the Father, long before all things, not in age, but in eternity. ”

“ This "holy" being, our relation to which is to take the place of our relation to an Eternal Father, by the adoration of which we are to be sustained and controlled, if it exist at all, is as ephemeral compared with eternity as a fly. We shall be told that we ought to be content with an immortality extending through tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of years. ”

“ Eternal life is said to be the greatest gift of God unto the human family. There are many gifts of God, but this is the greatest of all. In the first place, God has given his Son to die for the human family. What a great gift! If it had not been for this gift of our Heavenly Father to the inhabitants of our fallen world, the consequence would have been that we should have had eternal death. What are we to understand by the term eternal death, supposing that there had been no atonement made? ”

“ A thousand notions of the doctrine of the Trinity, however clear they may be, will never bring a man to heaven; he must have the love of the Father in his heart, and the blood of atonement in his conscience, by the operation of the Eternal Spirit. This, and this only, is real heart-felt religion, which will stand the test in life, death, judgment, and eternity. ”

“ And this is life eternal that they should know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ Whom Thou hast sent. The Father, then, is glorified through the Son, by His being made known to us. And the glory was this, that the Son, being made flesh, received from Him power over all flesh, and the charge of restoring eternal life to us, ephemeral beings burdened with the body. Eternal life for us was the result not of work done, but of innate power; not by a new creation, but simply by knowledge of God, was the glory of that eternity to be acquired. Nothing was added to God’s glory ”

“ You have read where it is written in the Prophets, 'You shall all be taught by God,' and that 'Those whom the Father teaches will hear also his Son.' Every one who yields to the teaching of the Father's indwelling spirit will eventually come to me. Not that any man has seen the Father, but the Father's spirit does live within man. And the Son who came down from heaven, he has surely seen the Father. And those who truly believe this Son already have eternal life.
"I am this bread of life. Your fathers ate manna in the wilderness and are dead. ”

“ The Father is eternal, the Son eternal, the Holy Ghost eternal, and yet there are not three eternals, only one eternal, as also there are not three uncreated, nor three incomprehensibles, only one uncreated, one incomprehensible. ”

“ God the Self-existent is one, Who is beyond all comprehension, in Three Eternal Persons. The Father who from eternity had no father. The Son of Him, without a son, and the Holy Spirit proceeding from them. He is the Almighty Essence, to Whom be glory in the temple of our humanity. ”

“ As, then, being in the incorruptibility of the Father, He is incorruptible, good in His goodness, powerful in His might, and, as being in each of these attributes of special excellence which are conceived of the Father, He is that particular thing, so, also, being in His eternity, He is assuredly eternal. Now the eternity of the Father is marked by His never having taken His being from nonexistence, and never terminating His being in non-existence. ”

“ When man realizes that the Universal Father is his partner in eternal progression, when he fuses with the indwelling Father presence, he has, in spirit, broken the fetters of time and has already entered upon the progressions of eternity in the quest for the Universal Father. ”

“ The gift of eternal life, without a posterity, to become an angel, is one of the greatest gifts that can be bestowed; yet the Lord has bestowed on us the privilege of becoming fathers of lives. What is a father of lives, as mentioned in the Scriptures? A man who has a posterity to an eternal continuance. ”

“ And if the Son, always appearing with the thought of the Father, is always found in the category of existence, what danger is there in owning the Eternity of the Only-begotten, Who “hath neither beginning of days, nor end of life [14] .” For as He is Light from Light, Life from Life, Good from Good, and Wise, Just, Strong, and all else in the same way, so most certainly is He Eternal from Eternal. ”

“ If we only follow what is clear to our reason, how can we be deemed worthy of the blessings in store for the reward of faith in things not seen”? [48]
If not of the essence of God, the Son could not be held to be eternal. “How utterly absurd,” exclaims Basil, “to deny the glory of God to have had brightness; [49] to deny the wisdom of God to have been ever with God!...The Father is of eternity. So also is the Son of eternity, united by generation to the unbegotten nature of the Father. This is not my own statement. I shall prove it by quoting the words of Scripture. ”

“ There is one God, Father of Him who is the living Word, subsisting Wisdom and Power and Eternal Impress, Perfect begotten of the Perfect, Father of the only begotten Son. There is one Lord, Alone of the Alone, God of God, Impress and Image of the Godhead, the operative Word; Wisdom comprehensive of the system of the universe, and Power productive of the whole creation; true Son of true Father, Invisible of Invisible and Incorruptible of Incorruptible, and Immortal of Immortal, and Eternal of Eternal. ”

“ The Saviour was begotten by the Father of His spirit, by the same Being who is the Father of our spirits, and that is all the organic difference between Jesus Christ and you and me. And a difference there is between our Father and us consists in that He has gained His exaltation, and has obtained eternal lives. The principle of eternal lives is an eternal existence, eternal duration, eternal exaltation. Endless are His kingdoms, endless His thrones and His dominions, and endless are His posterity; they never will cease to multiply from this time henceforth and forever. ”

“ This is the inheritance with which the eternal covenant of God invests us, conveying the everlasting gift of grace; and thus our loving Father—the true Father—ceases not to exhort, admonish, train, love us. For He ceases not to save, and advises the best course: "Become righteous," says the Lord. ”

“ We proclaim in answer, on the evidence of Apostles and Evangelists, that the Father is eternal and the Son eternal, and demonstrate that the Son is God of all with an absolute, not a limited, pre-existence; that these bold assaults of their blasphemous logic—He was born out of nothing, and He was not before He was born—are powerless against Him; that His eternity is consistent with sonship, and His sonship with eternity; that there was in Him no unique exemption from birth but a birth from everlasting, for, while birth implies a Father, Divinity is inseparable from eternity. ”