Come to find out, God himself had a beginning. Because according to John chapter 1, and I quote “In the beginning was God.” So God himself had a beginning. He was born. From John chapter 1.
St. Cyril of Alexandria (444 A.D.) wrote quite a bit about this verse!
It is not possible to take beginning, understood in any way of time, of the Only-Begotten, seeing that He is before all time and hath His Being before the ages, and , yet, more the Divine Nature, shuns the limit of a terminus. For it will be ever the same, according to what is sung in the Psalms, But, though art the Same and Thy years shall have no end.
From what beginning then measured in respect of time and dimension will the Son proceed, Who endureth not to hasten to any terminus, in that He is God by Nature, and therefore crieth, I am the Life? For no beginning will ever be conceived of by itself that does not look to its own end, since beginning is so called in reference to end, end again in reference to beginning.
But the beginning we are pointing to in this instance is that relating to time and dimension. Hence, since the Son is elder than the ages themselves, He will be free of any generation in time; and He ever was in the Father as in a Source, according to that which He Himself said, I came forth from the Father and am come.
The Father then being considered as the Source, the Word was in Him, being His Wisdom and Power and Express Image and Radiance and Likeness.
And if there was no time when the Father was without Word and Wisdom and Express Image and Radiance, needs it it to confess too that the Son Who is all these to the Everlasting Father, is Everlasting.
He goes on and on just talking about this first verse of the Gospel according to the Holy Evangelists, St. John.
The point of many of the Early Church Fathers is that God existed eternally before the creation of time (or beginning as it was).
Don’t get me wrong, God still created the Universe. But that creation of the Universe came AFTER God was born. And God’s birth is shown in John chapter 1, and I quote “In the beginning was God.”
I disagree, I think God has always been here. Our consciousness (or what Catholics term as souls) are made of pure energy. And according to the Law of Conservation, energy can neither be created nor destroyed. Energy has always been around. God has always been around. When The Bible says “In the beginning was God”, they’re not so much referring to God’s birth, they’re just saying before the Universe and everything else there was only God.
I don’t read it that way. “In the beginning [ of creation ] was God.” I take that to mean that before God created creation, only God existed.
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Pax is right. Also, what version says, “In the beginning was God”? I checked two versions, and both say, “In the beginning was the Word” (Jesus, the Word of God). Verse one says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”—that is, Jesus, the Word of God, was God and was present when our world began. It says nothing about God being born (of whom, anyway?) and does not say that there was a time when God didn’t exist.
Or could this be translated as meaning “God, who is, began.” John 1 is referring to the person of Christ (who is God), but God Himself is eternal and therefore has no beginning and no ending. He is the great I am. Does this make sense?
I think you are reading the words with a modern, literal translation, which is causing you to say that God had a beginning, but as some of the Early Church Fathers I quoted pointed out, beginning relates to time & space and God is outside of time & space. And it was God who created time & space (Genesis 1:1).
It is not an accident that the first verse on the Gospel of John (1:1) mirrors the first verse of Genesis (1:1).
Correct! Here are various translations to compare.