A Wordless God?

"If the Son was not before he was begotten, and if, as Athanasius argues, this can only be understood as a temporal statement, then God willed and determined to beget and to create before the Son was.  That is nonsense, since the Son is the Word, and how can God deliberate about anything when he is yet wordless?" - Leithart, Athanasius, p71.

There was a time when the "Word became flesh," but there never was a time when the Word wasn't.