Luke J. Wilson | 12 hours ago | Christmas
How can God beget a Son? Does that mean Jesus is His creation?
This question comes sharply into focus during Advent, when the Church contemplates the Incarnation: the eternal Son entering the world as a baby in Mary’s womb. And to understand this, we turn to language the Church has treasured for centuries — especially that crucial distinction between begotten and created.
And C. S. Lewis describes this with a real concise clarity:
We don’t use the words begetting or begotten much in modern English, but everyone still knows what they mean. 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.
By saying that Jesus is begotten from the Father, we are saying that Jesus is fully God and not a creation of God (Arianism), nor is the Son of God simply a mode or action of God (Sabellianism).
This is the heart of Christian theology: begotten = shared nature created = different nature
Begotten Means “of the Same Essence”
When the Father begets the Son, He is not constructing or manufacturing Him. Begetting is not an act inside time. It is an eternal relationship.
Just as:
light is never without radiance
a fire is never without heat
the Father is never without the Son
There was never a moment “before” the Son existed. The Son is eternally from the Father, sharing His nature, His essence, His Godness. As John says in the opening of his Gospel, Jesus as the Son was/is “in the bosom of the Father”. This was historically understood that the Word always existed within the Father.
When Christ Is Misunderstood: Modalism and Arianism
Two ancient heresies emerge from misunderstanding “begotten, not made.”
1. Modalism (Sabellianism)
This claims that:
Father, Son, and Spirit are just different forms or roles of one person.
This erases the real distinctions within the Trinity.
If Modalism were true:
Jesus is praying to Himself.
The Father sending the Son is theatre.
Christ’s baptism is a staged illusion.
Modalism collapses the Persons into one persona wearing different masks.
2. Arianism
Arius taught that:
Jesus was created by God ex nihilo
He is a divine-like being, but not equal in essence
This makes Jesus the highest creature… but still a creature.
If Jesus is created, then He cannot:
reveal God perfectly
unite humanity to God
save us entirely and absolutely
Only God can reconcile us to God.
The Nicene Creed: Drawing a Line in the Sand
At the Council of Nicaea (325 AD), the Church responded boldly and clearly:
God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one being with the Father.
This was a decisive boundary.
begotten — of the same nature
not made — not a creation
of one being (homoousios) — equal in essence, not similar
The Creed functioned like a theological guardrail.
Christ is not “like God” — He is God.
The creeds act as guardrails for orthodox interpretation
Proverbs 8: Wisdom Begotten, Not Created
The Fathers saw Proverbs 8 as speaking of the Son under the title “Wisdom”:
The Lord begot me at the beginning of his work...
Luke J. Wilson | 31st October 2025 | Halloween
In our last post, we walked with Perpetua and Felicity through the sands of the amphitheatre, their faith outshining Rome’s cruelty. Now for the final part in this series, we turn to another of the Church’s earliest heroes — one whose courage was matched by an unexpected wit. His name was Lawrence, a deacon of Rome, remembered across centuries as the man who kept his humour even while lying on the griddle.
The Setting: Rome, AD 258
Under Emperor Valerian, a fresh persecution of Christians swept through the Empire. Bishops, priests, and deacons were hunted down, their property seized, and their churches closed. The bishop of Rome at that time was Sixtus II — a gentle and wise shepherd who, like the apostles before him, was soon to drink from the same cup as his Lord. Among his closest companions was Deacon Lawrence, entrusted with overseeing the Church’s treasury and distributing alms to the poor.
The Acts of St Lawrence tell us that when Sixtus was arrested and led to execution, Lawrence ran after him, crying out that he would not be left behind.
Where are you going, father, without your son? Where are you going, priest, without your deacon? You never used to offer sacrifice without me as your minister!
To which Sixtus replied:
My son, I’m not leaving you. Greater trials are waiting for you. In three days you’ll follow me.
Sixtus was beheaded soon after. Lawrence, meanwhile, was arrested and brought before the Roman prefect who, hearing that Lawrence had been the keeper of the Church’s wealth, demanded that he hand it over to the empire.
The True Treasure of the Church
The exchange that followed has been remembered ever since, partly for its irony, partly for its courage.
“Bring forth,” said the prefect, “the treasures of the Church — the gold, the silver, and the precious vessels — that the emperor may possess them.”
Lawrence asked for three days to gather them, which the prefect granted, no doubt imagining chests of glittering riches being prepared for him. Instead, Lawrence went through the city, gathering the blind, the crippled, the widows, the orphans, and all who were destitute or suffering. On the third day, he presented them before the prefect and declared:
These are the treasures of the Church. Behold the gold and silver that I promised thee — the eternal jewels in whom Christ dwells.
The prefect, enraged at being mocked, ordered that Lawrence be scourged and tortured, then laid upon an iron gridiron above a slow fire.
The Martyrdom
The ancient texts, mingling reverence and humour, tell the story that has echoed down the ages and had left an impact on me purely for the humour that I find in it!
They laid him upon the iron bed, and beneath it kindled coals, that his flesh might be roasted little by little. And Lawrence, lying there, lifted up his eyes to heaven and gave thanks to God for counting him worthy to suffer.
After some time, the account continues with words that have made Lawrence one of the most memorable of all martyrs:
Having been a long time on the fire, he said to his tormentors with a cheerful countenance: ‘This side is done; turn me over and eat.’
It is difficult to read those words without laughing at how funny it sounds! It matches the kind of dark humour that I can have and often think of, which is probably why the story of Lawrence appeals to me so much, it’s the kind of silly thing I would think to say (though I’m not sure if I would in Lawrence’s place!).
In the face of unbearable agony, Lawrence mocked his tormentors and even death itself. His humour was not flippant, but a final victory over the fear that his persecutors wanted to instil. His joke was an act of defiance against the gods whom Decius implored against the power of Christ within Lawrence. Despite how hot it must have been, Lawrence declares a worse fate on Decius, warning him of the fire he will face because of this, saying that the “burning c...
Luke J. Wilson | 29th October 2025 | Halloween
In the last post, we looked at Polycarp — a faithful bishop who faced the flames rather than deny his Lord. His courage in the face of certain death became a rallying light for generations of believers after him. But his story is only one among many in the long line of the cloud of witnesses who ran the race before us (Hebrews 12:1). Today, we step forward a few decades to another account of extraordinary faith — that of two women, Perpetua and Felicity.
Perpetua left an account of her own martyrdom (technically a Passion) which is considered historically reliable. What makes it extraordinary is that Perpetua herself wrote a portion of it in Latin before her death, making it one of the earliest known writings by a Christian woman! It was then continued by another who witnessed the events once she entered the arena.
The Setting: Carthage, AD 203
Our story takes us to North Africa during the reign of Emperor Septimius Severus. Christianity was still seen as a threat to the Roman order, and anyone refusing to sacrifice to the emperor’s image could be imprisoned or executed. Among the arrested were a small group of catechumens (new believers preparing for baptism) including a young noblewoman named Vibia Perpetua and her servant, Felicity.
Perpetua was only twenty-two years old and the mother of an infant son. Her father, a pagan, begged her to renounce the faith and save her life, but she would not. In her prison diary — one of the earliest surviving Christian texts written by a woman — she records their suffering and her unshakable resolve and faith. After she was arrested with her companions, she wrote of a moment when her father came and tried to persuade her to sacrifice to the Emperor and deny her faith:
When my father, out of love for me, tried to turn me from my faith, I said to him: ‘Father, do you see this vessel here — a water pot or whatever it may be? Can it be called by any other name than what it is?’ He answered, ‘No.’ Then I said to him, ‘So too I cannot call myself anything other than what I am — a Christian.’
A few days after this they were all baptised while imprisoned under house arrest awaiting their trial before being moved to the more restrictive Roman cells once they were formally condemned to die by wild beasts. After her baptism, the Spirit spoke to Perpetua and told her that she must “pray for nothing else after that water save only endurance of the flesh”.
Perpetua and Felicity await their fate in the Roman prison
The prison was dark, so dark she said she had “never known such darkness”, plus it was hot and crowded, the soldiers mistreated them all and she was trying to care for her child! Thankfully, later on a couple of deacons, Tertius and Pomponius, who were ministering to them managed to somehow pay the Romans to allow Perpetua and Felicity some respite in a better part of the prison where the child could be better fed and later handed off into the care of Perpetua’s mother.
Dreams of Victory
While in prison, Perpetua received a series of visions that strengthened her for what lay ahead. In one, she saw a golden ladder reaching up to heaven, guarded by a fierce serpent below, and sharp iron spikes along either side. Only those who stepped on the serpent’s head and climbed the ladder could enter. She interpreted this as her coming trial — the climb of faith through suffering to eternal life, realising that God wasn’t going to deliver her from this trial, but that it should be her passion (i.e. her death). It’s an image of triumph through endurance that echoes Christ’s own words: “Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life” (Revelation 2:10).
Felicity’s story is just as moving. She was heavily pregnant at eight months when arrested and gave birth in prison mere days before the execution. Roman law forbade torment of a pregnant woman, so she would have stayed in prison until the birt...
Luke J. Wilson | 25th October 2025 | Halloween
Picture the scene: the year is somewhere around 155–160, Polycarp has just been arrested and brought to the city. The crowd roared in the stadium. The smell of sweat and fear mingled with the dust of Smyrna’s arena. And in the centre of it all stood an old man — calm, unflinching, his face marked with years of faith. The Roman proconsul urged him again: “Swear by the fortune of Caesar. Curse Christ, and I will release you.”
Polycarp looked him in the eye and replied with a defiant response that has echoed down the ages,
Eighty and six years I have served Him, and He has done me no wrong. How can I blaspheme my King who saved me?
Those words have become immortal in and of themselves, reverberating from pulpits, prison cells, and whispered prayers in dark times. They belong to Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, and one of the clearest windows we have into the courage of the early Church.
The place of Polycarp’s martyrdom was not Rome, as many assume, but the bustling city of Smyrna, in what is now western Turkey. Smyrna was one of the great cities of Asia Minor — wealthy, loyal to Rome, and proud of its grand stadium where games and public spectacles were held. It was in that very stadium, believed by archaeologists to have seated up to 20,000 people, before the watching crowds and the Roman proconsul of the province, that the aged bishop was brought to stand trial. The same stadium that once echoed with cheers for athletes and gladiators would now resound with the final testimony of a Christian who refused to curse his King.
The Roman stadium of Smyrna, located on the slopes of Mount Pagos, fully excavated in 2014. (Source)
A Disciple of the Apostles
Polycarp was no obscure figure on the fringes of history. Born around AD 69, he lived at the very hinge between the apostolic age and the developing life of the Church. Tradition tells us that he was a disciple of the Apostle John, friend and fellow bishop with Ignatius of Antioch, and a mentor to another great bishop — Irenaeus of Lyons. Through Polycarp, we stand just one generation away from the eyewitnesses of Jesus Himself.
He served faithfully as bishop of Smyrna (modern-day Izmir, Turkey), a bustling port city of trade, culture, and imperial devotion. When persecution began to stir, Polycarp was not a young zealot but an elderly shepherd who had spent his life guiding others in Christ’s way. His story is preserved in The Martyrdom of Polycarp, one of the earliest martyr narratives ever written, likely composed by those who knew him personally.
How the Stadium would have looked in the time of Polycarp. Image: İzmir Time Machine
The Arrest and the Trial
When soldiers came to arrest him, Polycarp did not run. Instead, he greeted his captors with hospitality, ordering food and drink to be brought to them. He even asked for an hour to pray, and they granted it. His prayer was so fervent and filled with grace that several of his guards later regretted their role in his capture.
Brought before the governor, Polycarp was told to swear by Caesar’s name, to prove his loyalty to Rome. He could have chosen silence. He could have muttered a few words to save himself. But instead, he stood firm in his faith and act boldly with confidence in his Saviour, who, when entering the stadium spoke to him by voice from heaven saying, “Be strong, and show thyself a man, O Polycarp!”. The other believers who were with Polycarp also heard the voice but no one saw where it came from.
Due to Polycarp’s advanced age, the proconsul tried to persuade him to just declare what was asked of him and say, “Swear by the fortune of Cæsar; repent, and say, ‘Away with the Atheists’”. In this context at the time, “Atheists” referred to Christians because they denied the pantheon of Roman gods.
But Polycarp, he wasn’t so easily intimidated. Looking around at “all the multitude of the wicked heathen” in the stadium seats, he waved his h...
