“Son of the Father, begotten, not created . . . ” It’s one of those theological ideas that reaffirms my thought that theologians are people with far too much time on their hands. And people were killed, and driven from their homes, because they differed over 1) how many natures did Jesus have, 2) was he fully human, part human, fully-human yet fully-divine, or 3) adopted by the Lord when the Holy Spirit entered into him at baptism, and/or 4) was of like/similar substance or of the same substance with the Father* . . .
Some of it depends on how heavily the thinker leaned on which parts of the New Testament. Other parts depended on the local political winds. “Our enemies say this, so we’ll say that!” When Christianity became respectable in the early AD 300s CE, and the Roman emperor announced, “One emperor, one creed, one church,” well things got messy. Not that everything had been sweetness and light before then, but the theological wranglings of the 300s-400s often come across as one of the lower points in church harmony and peace. (Let’s face it, any religion that involves people is going to get messy.)
I try to stay away from the theological fights, because I’m a heretic by most every denomination’s creeds and teachings. *shrugs* My beliefs are between me and my chosen deity, and I’ll answer for them at some point. Although, you have to figure that any deity who came up with aardvarks, platapodes, puffins, and sea-cucumbers must have a far better sense of humor than some believers seem to have had at times.
So, speaking of “Um, OK, that’s different,” I present two recordings of Christmas music by groups that one usually associates with things other than Christianity and Christmas.
Now, Souxie and the Banshees IS about the last group I’d expect to do “Il est né.”
It’s different!
*There was one iota (Greek letter) difference between homoousios and homoiousios. Thus the “not one iota of difference between . . .” saying in English.
Cat Rotator's Quarterly 
Oh, this was worth it for the “iota” bit….
Agreed!
Agreed.
(And that’s as someone who got her kids singing the opening snippet.)
Not enough coffee yet. 😉
Erasure is still a going concern? Too bad more of the EDM industry didn’t follow their lead. They were fun to listen to.
Heh. (And continuing the NPC discussion…) I remember when all the New Age and “spiritual but not religious” were listening to Enya, and I took the time to grab a few foreign language dictionaries to figure out what’s the heck she was singing about that she couldn’t say in English.
And found that they mostly translated as things like “Father on high”, and “I worship you, my God”. (I’d already noticed that some of her songs in English lifted their melodies from hymns.)
With her, Dio, and Mr. Mister, you could play overtly Christian songs in public, with nobody batting an eye.
It was delightfully subversive.
Far too much time on their hands? It reminds me of academic disputes over differences most people can’t understand. And the argument is over a turn of phrase that may … or may not … be more a quirk of the language(s) at hand than of substance. I recall some that years ago Rome and one of the Protestant denominations agreed, after centuries, that one of their differences was a matter of translation and emphasis, rather than a denial of the others’ claim.
One rather unpleasant argument back in the 500s got defused when it was pointed out that what one side was taking as rank heresy was mystical poetry written in a very different language. Part of the “homoousios” controversy came about because of trying to translate it into Latin, which used the same word for both with and without the iota.
Iota… sigh… I need more coffee for this one…
A magnificent lead-up to the ‘iota’ line.
And I agree with you about the platypodes, aardvarks, etc. See also tree kangaroos, barreleye fish, seahorses, and especially octopuses. Mother Nature seems to hit the uisgebagh rather hard at times.