It’s now the second week of Advent, and, as promised, I have another hymn to reflect upon. This hymn in particular, I must admit that I was initially put off by a tune I initially found odd, but after being drawn in by the lyrics, which constitute truly deep Christology, I learned to love it (even the weird tune!). That hymn is Of the Father’s Love Begotten, originally written by Aurelius Clemens Prudentius.
Introduction
The author, Prudentius, is a somewhat obscure figure from the standpoint of history. He was a Spaniard, born in 348, two decades after the First Council of Nicaea. His career as a poet, however, does not begin until later in his life, the landmark moment being the publication of some of his works in the year 405.1
This particular hymn, Of the Father’s Love Begotten, appears in a collection of hymns prepared to be sung at different times of the day, called Cathemerinon. Although Prudentius himself was no monk, this reflects the beginning of the great monastic orders during Prudentius’ time period, with their regimens and the practice of keeping “holy hours” — a more modern cognate would be the Liturgy of the Hours within the Roman Catholic Church, and similar practices prepared for use within Protestant contexts. Prudentius’ works quickly made their way into the liturgy of the Church, and his legacy shines even down to this day, as his works appear in many a hymnal of whatever Christian stripe.2
I will be reflecting upon the translation which I am most familiar with, that being the one produced in the 1800’s by Neale and Baker. The original text is, of course, a Latin composition, to which I may make reference to in passing, but primarily I will be commenting on this translation. The primary reason for this, although I could work (struggle) through the Latin, is that the Latin version is not what is commonly sung in my context, so it’s less personally meaningful.
Verse 1
Of the Father’s love begotten,
Ere the worlds began to be, …
I have noticed that it’s the pattern of many of the most popular Christmas hymns to begin by recounting the narrative of Christ’s nativity, drawing heavily from the episodes in Luke 2 and Matthew 1. And, of course, there’s good reason for that. Compare this with the famous hymn “O Come, all ye Faithful,” in which the hymn begins beckoning Christians to come and see the infant Christ, and then the next verse focuses on his divine origin by citing the Creed (“God of God, Light of Light…”). This hymn boldly takes us into the sublime realities of who this Jesus is before poetically recounting his deeds. Structurally, this seems to form an inclusio with the closing verses of the hymn, which call on the angelic armies to praise the divine Christ (six), and sing praises to the Triune God (seven).
What does it mean for the Son, Jesus, to be “Of the Father’s love begotten / ere the worlds began to be”? That word “begotten” is striking — it’s not one used in modern English too often. My Greek professor, back during my undergraduate, described it as a “stained-glass word”: one Christians hear at church, but in no other context. A modern English equivalent would be the word “born”: when we say that Christ is “only-begotten,” we mean that he is the only Son of the Father.
The technical English theological term for this “begetting” of the Son is his Eternal Generation. A full explanation and biblical case for this classical dogma is out of the scope of this reflection, but the basic point is that Christ Jesus has always been God’s Son. There was never a point at which the Son became the Son, or a point where he was not the Son. He has always, “ere the worlds began to be,” had a relationship with the Father such that the Father has always been his Father and that he has always been the Father’s Son. This relationship we term generation or begottenness.
This is all fraught with technical terminology, and in our modern context we may be asking why this is significant. “What does it matter to my relationship with Jesus that he was ‘begotten of the Father before all worlds’?” But I would say that it is highly relevant, because what’s at stake is the Son’s eternality, and ultimately his Godhood with the Father.3 That which God begets is God, and this doctrine of the eternal generation points us straight to who Jesus really is: God over all.
Notice that the song does not quite say that he was “begotten of the Father,” but says that the Son was “begotten of the Father’s love.” This is a literary device called metonymy, where the name of a closely related thing is employed instead of the name of a thing itself to make some point.4 The metonymy has the effect of coloring how exactly we ought to be thinking about the Son’s begottenness in this verse: that eternal relationship between Father and Son is one of love. The Father has always loved the Son and the Son has always loved the Father.
What is the point of all this? I mean, I love to talk doctrine, but I’m aware not everyone is. Why start with this line? To prove our orthodoxy? Surely not. I think the reason why we’re starting here is to say that Christ, the one born as an infant, hailed by the prophets and angels, etc. is the one who was with the Father eternally, and is eternally loved by him, which then colors our perception of everything he did while here below on earth. As we reflected last week on What Child is This, it certainly colors the nativity episode to know that someone with such a humble birth was really God over all. But also think to all the sufferings which Christ would undergo throughout his life: rejected by those he came to rescue from their sins, and ultimately put to death as a martyr, feeling intense physical anguish, but also emotional anguish. This is the one whom the Father loves? Yes, and he willingly underwent it for you and I, to suffer in our place, to bring us to God.
… He is Alpha and Omega,
He the source, the ending He,
Of the things that are, that have been,
And that future years shall see,
Evermore and evermore.
The verse continues to laud Christ as divine, picking up on Jesus’ self identification as the “Alpha and the Omega” in Revelation 22.13. The song helpfully comments on precisely what this means, and I think Prudentius hits the nail on the head: Christ, of everything past, present, and future (perhaps alluding to the language of Revelation 1.8), is the source and the end. In the Latin original, the word here used for “end” (clausula) refers primarily to the end of something like a period of time, or a letter, etc., rather than something’s “end,” as in its purpose. So the reference here seems to be Christ’s eternality, which, if we remember, was also the primary point of the previous section discussed of this verse. That Christ is the eternal Son, he had no beginning. In fact, he is the source of all created things (John 1.3), and he will remain, although heaven and earth pass away (Hebrews 1.8-12).
We then turn to consider the incarnation in all of this: this Eternal One entered into time. This reality is something that we can barely grasp at as humans: that a timeless being became subject to time. And all of this, again, for our sake.
Verse 2
At his word the worlds were framèd;
He commanded, it was done:
Heav’n and earth and depths of ocean,
In their threefold order one;
All that grows beneath the shining
Of the moon and burning sun—
Evermore and evermore.
This next verse moves from the Son’s eternal existence with the Father to his creative activity, what might be considered the beginning of temporal things. “His,” should be carried over into this verse to primarily refer to the Son, although of course everything here could be sung of the Father and Spirit likewise (inseparable operations, or something). Notice the agency highlighted in this verse: it is “at [Christ’s] word” that the worlds are framed; that which Christ commands is done, and there is no debate. What Christ says will be, is; and this is how everything around us came into being.
The mention of a “threefold order” here seems to refer to the three things which God is often mentioned as creating, especially within the Old Testament: first, sky; second, land; third, seas. The language of “three” and “one” here leads me to believe that Prudentius sees, by analogy, something Trinitarian in this design: these three “realms” form one “cosmos.” If we were to take this too far, we’d have to condemn Prudentius as a partialist, but Prudentius probably did not intend this to be some flawless analogy for the Trinity: there is no perfect analogy for the Trinity, as God is unique, utterly distinct from the created order from which we’d draw any analogy. However, Prudentius probably didn’t intend this to be taken any farther than to say that God has impressed himself upon his creation, such that he, although himself invisible, is seen in it. And, in this, St. Paul concurs (Romans 1.20), so I have no problem singing this.
So everything around us, sky, land, and sea, was created and framed, even upheld, by this infant. This is a reality which I think we’re quick to confess but not stop to consider for a second how amazing this is. One of my professors in college, during a theology class, put it this way: “you have not begun to grapple with the Incarnation unless you’ve considered that the infant Jesus was sleeping in a manger while at that same time upholding the universe by the word of his power.”
Verse 3
He was found in human fashion,
Death and sorrow here to know,
That the race of Adam’s children,
Doomed by law to endless woe,
May not henceforth die and perish
In the dreadful gulf below—
Evermore and evermore.
Moving from the sublimities of Christ’s divine nature, the song now turns to consider Christ’s human nature. The Christian Church confesses that Christ, although one person, has two natures: a divine nature, and a human nature, and these two became united at Jesus’ conception, at the moment of the Incarnation. In less technical terminology: Jesus has everything necessary to be called “God” in the fullest sense, and furthermore he also has everything necessary to be called “human” in the fullest sense; this has been the case since his conception, and it will continue to be the case forevermore. Him being human in no way detracts from his Godhead; him being God in no way detracts from his humanity. If you want a term to encapsulate this concept, it would be Chalcedonian Christology, after the Church council which convened at the city of Chalcedon to formulate this definition. Though this final declaration shows up in the fifth century, the concept behind it, that Jesus from the point of the Incarnation has been both man and God, though not in thorough technical language, has always been confessed by the Church, since the beginning, and in fact is even present in the New Testament. A solid biblical case could be made for this doctrine (founded on the fact that Jesus is called both “God,” John 1.1, and “human,” 1 Timothy 2.5), but that is without of the scope of this post.
But, moving past this technical jargon, what is this verse saying? Really, it’s the Gospel in a nutshell. Jesus, taking on that human nature at the Incarnation, became really human. The language of being “found in human fashion” is taken from the great Christological hymn in Philippians 2. But why did he do that? Our Chalcedonian Christology explains the metaphysics behind what he did, but the question of why, or what is this Incarnation’s telos, has yet to be answered. This verse answers that question beautifully: he took on flesh to suffer. God, in himself, cannot suffer,5 because for God to suffer as humans do would be to ascribe imperfection to God, as well as change: God would be worse off when he was suffering, and better off when he wasn’t. However, in God’s plan of salvation, there needed to be one to suffer on behalf of humanity, to take the sins of the people on himself. God by nature, as one who cannot suffer, could not do this; unless by the addition of a nature which could. Those under the Law, that is, the Law of Moses, were doomed to die: any breach warrants death. But Christ, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, took on flesh, that he might save those under that very Law, so that they might not be doomed to the death which they deserve. That is why Christians are said to have “escaped the second death” (Revelation 20.6).
So let’s now consider this in light of the Christmas story: that baby Jesus is a baby for the sake of suffering. He’s born into a cruel world that hates him. That child will be run through with a spear, nailed to a Roman cross, die a gruesome death, one so hideous that the very name of it, “σταυρος” (cross), was a “bad word” in the ancient world. But he did it, to save mankind. Note that this is the very mankind that he just created in the previous verse: he, the Creator of all, died for the sake of that which he created. Why? If I make pottery, and I chip it after it dries, I’m going to throw it away and start afresh. I wouldn’t try to glue it back together, let alone die for it. The only explanation is love, that God really did love those who he made in his own image. And I hope that all my readers would know God’s love.
Verse 4
O that birth forever blessèd,
When the virgin, full of grace,
By the Holy Ghost conceiving,
Bore the Savior of our race,
And the babe, the world’s Redeemer,
First revealed his sacred face—
Evermore and evermore.
After considering Christ’s humanity in the abstract, and its purpose, the song pivots to talking about the actual events of the nativity, as recorded in the Gospels. The Virgin Mary, the one highly favored by God,6 has been blessed above all women, in that she was chosen to bear the Christ. And, as a Protestant, I don’t think we need to “talk down” Mary’s importance here: all generations will call her blessed, and it is from her very own humanity that the humanity of the world’s Savior is taken. But, in all her obedience and blessedness, she is but a shadow in comparison to her greater Son, the Lord Jesus, who is identified here as the Redeemer of the world, the one who will purchase salvation for mankind. This birth takes place by the Holy Spirit, which is to say that this birth is miraculous, appropriated primarily to that Third Person of the Trinity. And he is the one doing the “revealing,” notice: “the babe… first revealed his sacred face” — even in his birth, he is sovereign, showing his divine authority over these events.
If we had to point to one verse in this song to identify as the most “Christmas-y,” then this one would be it. But we shouldn’t just take these things for granted. A good question that I think we as interpreters should ask is this: “why is this birth blessed?” It’s everything previous. That this babe, who is now revealing himself to the world, is God above all, and he has come to suffer in accord with the divine plan of salvation.
Verse 5
This is he whom seers in old time
Chanted of with one accord,
Whom the voices of the prophets
Promised in their faithful word;
Now he shines, the long-expected;
Let creation praise its Lord—
Evermore and evermore.
But we must remember that this birth, and, moreover, this Christ, did not pop onto the scene from nowhere. Christ’s life and death where all “according to the Scriptures” — and that is what this next verse is about. Interestingly, Prudentius envisions two choruses singing the coming of Christ: one are the “seers” (vates), and the other are the prophets. The prophets we know, and the Latin text seems to imply that we ought to think of these as the authors of the Old Testament — specific reference is made to the “paginae” of their prophecies, implying that we’re talking about prophecies with pages, or a book, and there really is not any other option to what he could be referring to than the OT. However, vates, translated “seers” in the popular rendition, I believe probably refers to ancient pagan prophets. I scoured a concordance to see if this word has its origin in the Latin Bible, but the word vates never occurs there at all (I supposed that perhaps when the Hebrew Bible refers to there being “seers” in Israel before there were prophets, like in the episode of 1 Samuel where Saul is called to be king, perhaps that was vates, but I was wrong). While I personally am not going to touch that idea with a ten-foot pole, many influential early Christians believed that some ancient pagans were “closet Christians” who, if they lived during the time of Christ’s advent, would have converted, and so they ought to be considered misguided Christians rather than enlightened Pagans. Most often great Greek philosophers like Socrates were granted this status. But also some ancient prophets, specifically the Sibyls, were very influential among early Christians. This word vates seems to have been applied to many of the ancient poets as well which perhaps by some were Christianized. The action of “chanting” evokes the mode of much ancient pagan prophecy, most famously the prophetic chants of the Oracle of Delphi. We know for a fact that the oracles of the Sibyls were used by early Christians and interpreted Messianically, just like they would an OT prophet, as a way to show that even outside Israel Christ was expected. Some of these oracles do seem to be Messianic in nature, pointing to a Jewish origin and validating this idea, but many were not.
But, now, Christ has come, long-expected, and he shines. Perhaps the “shining” here is in contrast to the “shadowy” revelation within the prophets and sibyls. And that shining further illuminates the shadows in those previous writings, such that the Christian reader, informed by Christ’s advent, can now see God’s plan unfold with clarity throughout redemptive history. There is no need for expectation anymore: the culmination of the ages is here, Christ has come. And the response of all creation is to praise their Lord, their Emanuel. And that’s I think as good of an application as any. It’s a glorious thing to flip back to our Old Testaments to see how God has actually been faithful in the past, and praise him for it: he has fulfilled his promises, such that every promise is Yes and Amen in Christ (2 Corinthians 1.20). And we know for certain, that because God has proven faithful in fulfilling his promises once before, and because he does not change so as to become unfaithful, he will deal faithfully with us, and we can therefore count on him.
Verse 6
O ye heights of Heav’n adore him!
Angel hosts his praises sing!
All dominions bow before him
And exalt our God and King.
Let no tongue on Earth be silent,
Every voice in concert ring—
Evermore and evermore.
This verse begins the “close” of the song, which will be directed praise towards Christ, who is our God and King. Here, there are two parties praising: everyone in heaven, and everyone on earth. This reflects the two spheres which God is said to have created in the merism of Genesis 1.1: sky and land. A merism is when two opposing parts are used to speak of a whole: so God creating “sky and land” means that he created “everything.” Here, everything in heaven and earth praises God. Everyone, then, and everything, is to praise and bow to the Lord God, who has come in the form of this infant. This interpretation is confirmed by the last line of the verse prior to the refrain: Every voice is in concert ringing.
This draws my mind to the reality at the end of the great Christological Hymn of Philippians 2, that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. We do not yet see this, as there are plenty of people out there who deny the Lord who bought them, but one day we have it on a very word from God that this will be the case. And ultimately, this is what we look forward to: to join this eschatological choir. But we don’t just wait around for that choir; the Christian even now participates in it, as we confess Christ, and those eschatological realities are made ours even now. To praise Christ, especially gathered on Sunday with his Church, where he promises to be with us in a special way, is to foretaste heaven. Thinking back to the topic of Christmas, this is the end of the Incarnation, its outcome, in a way: that Christ would be praised by all the children whom God gave him, all the people he redeemed.
Verse 7
Christ! to thee with God the Father,
And O Holy Ghost, to thee,
Hymn and chant and high thanksgiving
And unwearied praises be,
Honor, glory, and dominion,
And eternal victory—
Evermore and evermore.
Perhaps it’s selective memory, but I tend to recall many older hymns end with a “Trinity verse,” whereas this isn’t so much a practice in newer hymns. But I like the practice, and although perhaps it’d be too uniform to do it in every hymn, I always appreciate it when I get it. I like this at the end of the hymn, as it communicates, I think, a certain ultimacy in praising God as Trinity, and him in Unity: this is really the highest form of Christian worship, in my mind. The hymn here ascribes all greatness to the Holy Trinity in unwearied praises. The focus is on Christ as the focal-point, with the Father and Spirit listed after, breaking the common triplex formula, since this hymn has primarily been Christological. This is of course not to the harm of the Spirit and Father, who also receive these unwearied praises with the Son; the unconventional ordering is simply a statement of focus.
Notice how we’ve shifted back to the transcendent as it was given at the beginning of the hymn. There, it was Eternal Generation, the eternal prior to the created world, but now it is eternal praise to the Trinity, presumably by his creatures who have been redeemed, perfected in that New Creation. It draws the hymn to a nice close as we reflect once more on the nature of God himself, and Christ’s person, which of course is at the essence of Christmas. And ultimately all festivities ought to lead back to this — to praise of Christ, the baby in a manger, with the Father and Spirit, forevermore. Would we exemplify that now on earth as his people.
- https://www.britannica.com/biography/Prudentius ↩︎
- https://denverjournal.denverseminary.edu/the-denver-journal-article/hymns-of-prudentius-the-cathemerinon-or-the-daily-round/ ↩︎
- It’s worth a note that this language developed out of the Arian controversy within the Church, wherein a certain presbyter, Arius, taught that when we speak of the Son as “begotten,” we really mean that he was “created,” thus the Arian slogan, “There was when the Son wasn’t.” Recall that Prudentius is writing in living memory of Nicaea, which is probably why this language displays so prominently. ↩︎
- We’re certainly not to think that the Son was begotten of a specific attribute of God as opposed to other attributes. This would be the heresy of partialism. God does not have “parts,” such that he could be born of one “part” (i.e. his love) and not another. This is poetic language, and ought to be interpreted as such. ↩︎
- It is biblical language to say that God can be “grieved,” which, for humans, entails suffering. There is similar language throughout Scripture in which God is said to experience human emotions, like “wrath.” However, it would be at best naive, and at worst making our own anthropomorphic god, to say that this language means the same thing when applied to God as it does humans. We shouldn’t imagine God shifting in emotions all the time like humans do: this idea raises a nigh infinite number of theological problems, the simplest to understand probably being that we now have a changing God. We speak of God equivocally: Solomon is not wise in the same sense as God is wise; however, there is some meaningful analogy, else we wouldn’t use the language. As far as the emotions which God is ascribed in Scripture, I’m sympathetic to St. Augustine’s explanation, wherein these are anthropomorphisms intended to speak about God in “baby-talk,” because God’s subjective experience is something no human can fathom. I would also add that I think any “change” in God’s emotion ought to be ascribed to the vicissitudes of the human party in relationship to God, not God himself. So, say a human at one time is said to please God, but in another, God is said to be angry at him. I put forward that what changed is the human, and the relationship between God and the human, but not God himself. ↩︎
- The song reflects a mistranslation of the angelic greeting prior to the Annunciation, particularly the word “κεχαριτωμένη,” which has made it over the centuries into allot of Marian devotion. This is at least as old as the Vulgate, which renders this participle as “gratia plena,” but most likely this is also present in the Old Latin, since Jerome barely modified the Old Latin for the NT (I don’t own a critical Vulgate yet, so I can’t check). I’m actually unsure what significance the understanding has historically, but at least in modern Roman Catholic practice it tends to convey the idea that Mary is a dispenser of God’s grace through her Son. However, the Greek here certainly does not reflect that, being a divine passive: God is the one who is “favoring” Mary; there is simply no basis to then assert that she can take that “favor” and put it on others. Oftentimes you’ll hear a popular Protestant polemic that God is here “gracing” Mary, and hence she cannot have been immaculately conceived, but I would warn against any such argumentation, lest we forget that a word from the same word group is applied to Jesus in Luke 2.52, the very same book, and even section of the book, where he is said to be “graced.” If we apply that same standard to Jesus, then the argument of the book of Hebrews falls apart, since Jesus is not sinless; otherwise, if Jesus being “graced” does not compromise his impeccability, then we can’t apply a double-standard and argue against Mary’s supposed sinlessness. Jesus is said to be “full of grace” in John 1, where a different phrase is used (πλήρης χάριτος). In Of the Father’s Love Begotten, this phrase is not present in the Latin original at all, actually — the popular translation is quite loose, and the epithet may have been included to fit the meter. ↩︎