That Little Word "Of"

This has been a little niggly in the back of my little brain for awhile now. When I was looking into the Athanasian Creed, the subject of "begotten of the Father" came up. Well, I talked about that in my longer report, so I won't repeat myself redundantly now.

It's that little word "of" that makes me prefer the translation of "monogenes" as "only begotten." My Greek is so rusty that it has fallen off its hinges inside my brain. To make matters worse, Spanish crowds out much of my English and makes me think that Greek is just a dialect of Spanish! So, this is not any attempt to be authoritative in any sense. It's just an examination of my niggly.

Anyway...back to "of"...as in "Son of God." In what sense is He "of" God. Does God possess the Son? That doesn't seem to make sense, since that would make the Son a lesser God and a mere possession of His Father.


It seems that "of" as in "theou" is something more than possessive, obviously. It is a genetive, which seems like why the Greek fathers pondered in what way the Son was generated by the Father and how it is related to "monogenes", or "begotten of the Father."

Anyway... it's a niggly... Maybe I'll look "theou" up in that big Greek grammar book we use as a doorstop. Tomorrow.