I’m going to join a church, officially. It’s something of a big deal over there in the erudite PCA, and so SPEP has us taking a 13 week course on the core beliefs of the church, which lean heavily on the reformed theology of John Calvin and friends. Today was my first class (though they had three without me), and we discussed how one would answer the question regarding whether Christ was a created being. The context is Colossians 1:9-20, but no man is an island, neither is any scripture.
Specifically, 1:15 is used as a so called “proof text” for this Christological heresy. The difference between a created Christ and a pre-existent Christ might not seem like much, but it ends up manifesting itself in a subservience (in nature) to God. Christ becomes, then, some kind of super-human, a man with the attributes of God as opposed to God himself. This is at the very core of Christian theology, that Christ is both man and God, fully and simultaneously.
15He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.
To address this issue, one of the elders (a church councilman in the Presbyterian church) rightly led the discussion to verse 18, where we see “firstborn” in context once again. It is clear from other scripture that Christ is not create, ergo we need to investigate 1:15 more to find out how we’re getting confused. An investigation of the word “firstborn” is in order.
18And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy.
The NIV uses supremacy, whatever translation we were using (probably ESV, they seem to like that one) used “preeminent”. His main argument was that Christ’s preeminence made him a non-created being.
I do agree, in a way. The other elder mentioned the creedal “begotten, not created” phrase from the Nicene Creed. I brought it back to that seminal verse, “for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son…” (italics mine). You see, I think that pre-eminence is a quantitative difference. Vladimir Putin is the preeminent Russian, but he is still a Russian, qualitatively similar to other Russians. I think that the firstborn terminology here is to indicate Jesus’ relationship to God, as principle heir and responsible fiduciary.
Jesus, on the other hand, as the only begotten son of God is qualitatively distinct from the rest of us. We are created, he is begotten. If I have a child, I don’t say that I have created him (OK, maybe I say that, but only because I think it sounds funny). I don’t say that I’ve begotten him either because the English language doesn’t work like that colloquially, but that is actually exactly what I mean. Jesus, in these terms, is God’s son. We are his handiwork. There is a qualitative difference.
While a created individual could still be preeminent among his peers, the distinction between begotten and created enforces the age old concept that Jesus, while being fully human, is also qualitatively different than us. It so happens that this difference is also one of quantity – he is supreme, preeminent as well.
Words 
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