The Only Begotten

"The Only Begotten"

...there trailed through the bewildered imagination some sort of fantastic procession of the funeral of God, at which the sun turned black, but which ended with the dead omnipotence breaking out of the tomb and rising again like the sun.
GKC The Everlasting Man CW2:296

To call a being, who was also a flesh and blood human being, monogenes or unigenitus was not something trivial in classical pagan context. There, the writings of Plato, Cicero, and Plutarch are a proof, the universe ... was also called monogenes or unigenitus. ... He was faced with the alternative: either Christ or the universe was "the only son."
S. L. Jaki, Christ and Science 19

Akhen-Aten was a pharoah
Ruled the Nile long ago
Many thought him very odd
For he worshiped just one god.

To see this god no one might dare,
His glory which no eye can bear,
Though blinding, yet he gives all sight;
His death was wept for every night.

Egyptian, Hindu, Aztec, Greek,
For world-truth some did seek;
But trapped within its cyclic line
Thought all above must be divine:

The perfect sky, from night to morn
Monogenes, the "Only-Born":
A god itself or god's true sending,
The kosmos - perfect world unending.

So they thought and they called "fool"
To bind heaven to Earth's rule.
Then Virgil sung, "A little while:
Know His mother by her smile."

Till one tax day, tall and brave
A man stood guard outside a cave,
And the Cause of all our Joy
Gave the world her little Boy...

The Child grew up, then as a Man
Was put to death by Roman plan
Nailed upon a wooden rack,
Funeral where the sun turned black

Friday night a second cave
Was this dead Man's stone-sealed grave.
Not stone nor guards nor three dead days
Could hold the new Sun's rising rays.

They follow still the Man Who died
Who promised with them to abide,
And an Advocate did leave
Thus "God from God" they must believe.

Now if this Man is God's own Son,
The Kosmos cannot be the One,
The sole-begotten, they concede;
Thus the sky's from godhood freed.

An apple's fall the truth displayed:
The skies above earth's rule obeyed.
So the Faith did Science breed,
Born within the Christian Creed.

July 24, 2005