The Creed, Article 2: One Lord Jesus Christ

"And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only-begotten, begotten of the Father before all ages." The word "begotten" is chosen with care. A son shares his father's nature; a thing that is made does not. To say the Son is "begotten before all ages" is to place His origin outside of time altogether: there was no moment when the Father was without His Son. This directly denied the slogan of Arius, "there was when the Son was not." The Son is eternal because the Father is eternally Father.

"Light of light" gives the image the Fathers loved best. As light streams from its source without ever being separated from it, and without the source being diminished, so the Son comes eternally from the Father — fully God, one with His origin, never a lesser second glow. He is Jesus Christ, the eternal Son, before He is anything born in time.

The Creed presses the point until it cannot be softened: "true God of true God; begotten, not made; of one essence with the Father." Not godlike, not divine by courtesy — true God, from true God. "Begotten, not made" draws the line the whole controversy turned on: the Son belongs on the Creator's side of the gulf between God and creation, not among the things He made. And "of one essence with the Father" renders the Greek homoousios, the single word the Council of Nicaea forged in 325 to shut every Arian escape: the Son shares the very same being as the Father.

"By Whom all things were made" completes the confession. The Son is the Word through whom the Father created everything — "All things were made by him," as St. John writes. The One "by Whom all things were made" cannot Himself be among the made things. Everything the Symbol of Faith goes on to say about the incarnation and the Cross depends on this: it is God Himself, not a creature, who comes down for us.