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January 1, 2025 |
| Only Begotten Son | ||
When we talk about the Only Begotten Son, it's obvious that we're talking about Jesus being the only begotten son of God. But there's quite a bit more to that phrase than you might have imagined.
This study will focus on only two of those words, only and begotten. We understand the word "Son" pretty well. We're going to focus on these two words because they've been a problem throughout history.
In the early Christian church, getting the correct meaning of these words caused a lot of fighting because there were many ideas about who Jesus was in relation to man and to God. Was Jesus just a man, or was he a God, or was he both a man and a God? If he was both a man and a God, in what way was he both? How is it possible for him to be both? Was he both at the same time, or did he switch between them?
There were many different ideas about how you could make that work. Also, there were many ideas about who the Father and Jesus and the Holy Spirit were in relation to each other. Was one of them in charge? Were they all fully God or were some less so than others? We're not going to spend much time on the fully God question.
Throughout all of this, the Roman Church was working to stomp out all of the ideas they didn't agree with, but some of their ideas did not agree with the Bible. Some of these they had to walk away from, but others they pushed forward anyway.
These disagreements resulted in the development of the Nicene Creed, which we'll look at later on. Christianity has a few creeds, which are declarations of basic beliefs. In the development of this creed, the Roman Catholic Church had ideas that it wanted incorporated.
This is the standard diagram for depicting the Trinity and the relationships between each person in the Trinity.
I'm a person who has lived his whole career looking at diagrams, creating diagrams, and understanding diagrams. When I saw this diagram for the first time, I said, this is not a clear diagram at all. Here are the problems I see.
It shows "God" as a separate circle. If each circle represents a person, then there are 4 persons in the Trinity, and the fourth one is called "God." Nobody believes that of course. It's obviously a problem with the drawing.
It's quite possible that the circles don't represent persons. The author of the diagram is likely describing relationships between words. Then the circles would be words, not persons. So the diagram would be telling us that you can say, for example, that the Father is God, but you cannot say that the Father is the Son. That would mean that the diagram was created by a literary person, not an engineering person.
I see people calling this diagram a description of the Trinity, and the way they talk about and use this diagram shows that they are viewing it the way I do - as an entity relationship diagram. Viewed that way, the diagram shows four entities in the Trinity. So it's a bad diagram for the purposes it is used.
The next problem is that it uses the word "God," but "God" is used in three different ways in the Bible. It's used as a title, like when Jesus speaks of God, he says, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" He's speaking to the Father and calling by the title "God."
It can also be a description of the Godhead, which is a common way to refer to the unity of the persons of the Trinity. Together the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are the "Godhead", which is often shortened to "God".
It can also be a reference to "God stuff", the essence that is God, the substance that makes God, God. If we say, "They are all God," we are saying that they are made of the same stuff, God stuff.
Which is the intended meaning in this diagram? In what sense is the Father God? He's certainly part of the Godhead, and he is certainly made of God stuff, and he has the title of God.
The next problem with the diagram is that the word "Son" is used in different ways, often incorrectly. It will come as a surprise to many people to hear that the Son did not exist at creation. When John speaks about creation, he says the Word was with God and the Word was God. Note that John is using the word "God" twice, each time with a different meaning for the word. The word "Son" is used to refer to what John calls the Word, and also to Jesus, and the Word and Jesus are not exactly the same person. Jesus is the incarnate Word, the Word made flesh. Is "Son" the correct word to use in this diagram? the Father and Jesus are not consubstantial, the term the Nicene creed uses to say they are made of the same stuff. We'll talk about that more in a moment.
The next problem with the diagram is the "is-not" lines. If this is an entity diagram, then these lines are useless, because the fact that you've got separate entities in the diagram means that they are different things. There is no need to have lines that express that. Once again we see an indication that the diagram's author was thinking about how to use and not use words, and not about the persons of the Trinity.
The next problem with the diagram can be seen by removing the "is-not" lines. All you have left are three "is" lines. The diagram has very little information content. People say that a picture is worth a thousand words. Well, this one is worth about 20 words. It's so low in content that it doesn't convey anything of value.
The Nicene Creed is generally supported by all of Christianity as a description of the foundation of Christianity. This is part of what it says:
We believe in […] one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the begotten of God the Father, the Only-begotten, that is of the substance of the Father. God of God, Light of Light, true God of true God, begotten and not made; of the very same nature of the Father. (Nicene Creed)
You might have wondered why they had to put so many terms in there, like "God of God, light of light, true God of true God." The reason is that this is much more of a political statement than a theological statement. With this statement, the authors of the creed are fighting against all of the other ideas that people had about who Jesus was.
There is a problem here that goes back to what I said before. It says that the Lord Jesus Christ is of the same substance as the Father, meaning he's made of exactly the same thing. But the Son is not the same as the Father. The Father is spirit. Jesus is flesh and spirit. There's a big difference there. If the Father is immortal as God, Jesus can plainly be killed, and was. The Nicene Creed goes out of its way to say they are exactly the same, but plainly, that isn't true.
The creed also leaves out the "Word," as though John had not said the Word was there at the beginning.
In the origin, the Word had been existing and that Word had been existing with God and that Word was himself God. (John 1:1)
Then skipping ahead 13 verses, we see this.
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14)
From these verses, we can see that the Word is God, and always was God, and always was in unity with God. We also see that Jesus is the fleshly incarnation of the Word. He's the combination of the Word, who pre-existed Jesus, and a body. That combination we call Jesus. As God, he was spirit-only prior to being incarnated (born as flesh), and then he was both spirit and flesh. The Son was begotten at that time.
We also see here the words, "we saw His glory." That's John speaking; he did indeed see the glory of God when Jesus was transfigured on the mountain, when he took on a bright, white, glowy look. John's point is that he and those with him at the time knew that Jesus was God when they saw him exhibit the glory of God (the Word) through His body.
The verse also says, "he became flesh." So we know he hadn't been flesh before. Jesus did not exist prior to his birth. I've heard some people say, "No, no, he existed before then." They are conflating the Word with Jesus. Most of the time, this confusion doesn't matter, but sometimes it does.
The Bible frequently uses "Jesus," where, technically, it should be saying "the Word." I'm sure this was done to simplify descriptions, and they expected better understanding from Christians, but this has definitely caused confusion in the church.
When he was born to Mary, he was given the name Yeshua, which means "God's salvation." With that, the Word became the salvation of all people. The Word never had that name or role before then.
We also see the "only begotten" part of the verse. We'll come back to that, as that's our central topic.
Jesus speaks about being in unity with the Father.
But I do know [God], because I am from unity with him, and he has sent me. (John 7:29)
The statement he made here almost got him stoned to death. He made it in public, and the people who heard understood what he meant by it, that he was claiming to be God, and that God had sent him. At that time in Israel, no Jew believed that God was anything but a single entity.
For the words that you [God] gave me I have given them, and they have received them and known truly that I have proceeded from unity with you. (John 17:8)
In this verse, Jesus is praying to God and speaking about his disciples.
It's easy to think that Jesus is saying he is God, but Jesus speaks the words that God gives him to speak. These are the words of the Word, the spirit of Jesus, remembering a history that the body of Jesus never experienced.
The Roman Catholic Church had its own idea about the nature of Jesus when the church was deciding theological issues. They thought that Jesus was fully God. By that, they meant that he was like salt and pepper that had been mixed together. Therefore he was God in his entire being.
This ignores the Bible's teaching that we are all made in the image of God, and are a trinity of body, mind, and spirit. My view, which I believe is also the Protestant view, is that Jesus was the body, including the mind, of a man with the spirit of God, that is, the Word.
Because the Messiah also died once for the sake of our sins, the righteous one in the place of sinners, to bring you to God, and he died in body and lived in Spirit. (1 Peter 3:18)
If he were God in his body, which is the Catholic view, then God, or part of God, died and began rotting when Jesus died. That isn't what Peter is saying in this verse.
Everyone agrees that Jesus was both God and man. The only way that makes sense and agrees with the Bible is:
Another aspect of the nature of Jesus is that he will discard that body by the Second Coming. When he comes again, he's not going to come in that body that has nail holes in the hands and feet.
There's another verse in the Bible that talks about the nature of Jesus. It talks about God reducing himself to something much smaller so that he could be in the body of a man.
He who, while he was in the form of God, did not esteem this as a prize, that he was the equal of God, 7 But he stripped himself and took the form of a Servant and was in the form of the children of men, and was found in fashion as a man. (Philippians 2:7)
Though he was of spirit, as God and equal to God, he did not consider that to be a right that he should cling to it. Instead he "stripped" himself. It was necessary that he become less. We don't, and probably can't, understand what is meant by stripped.
I've improved the diagram to address some of the issues. It uses names that are clearer or adds clarification. I also added indications of immortality.
It still has the problem that the Godhead is a separate thing, a separate entity. The "is not" lines are still there and still contribute nothing, because their point is obvious.
The big change is showing that the Word leaves the unity of the Trinity to be inside of a mortal body. Remember the verse that shows the Word desiring to return to the unity he once had.
To resolve those last two problems, I had to do a big rework of the diagram.
The lines are gone, both "is" and "is not". Instead of saying "is," the diagram now shows them joined in a unity that is still 3 persons. The name "God Head" is now a title for that unity.
I think this is a much better drawing that represents what the Bible says better and more clearly.
I talked about early Christianity's internal fight about what "only" and "begotten" meant. This was one of many fights that broke out over the deity and the nature of Jesus. They began after the apostles were gone, when Christians started to dig deeper into the word, which now included the writings of the apostles.
We need to understand that Roman and Greek Christians had come from a mythology. From that, they already had an understanding of certain things about gods, but not a correct understanding. For example, they understood what would happen if a human mated with a god - you would get a demigod, a lesser God.
Some of the sides in these battles were Christians who were applying polytheistic-mythology thinking to Christianity. So there were some people who figured that Jesus must be a demigod because he was the product of God and a human.
Other Christians, it seems, just dreamed up ideas, possibly without reading much scripture.
Many of these ideas came from the Greek word that's used in John 3:16 and in many other places. In English, it is the word that is usually translated as "only begotten." That's where we are going now.
The Greek word "monogenes," which means one gene, or one genetic. And so sometimes this is translated to only begotten in English.
The Roman Church had its own ideas about how to understand this, and they were fighting to win the battle of ideas. They were excommunicating leaders of movements that had other ideas. They insisted that the word "monogenes" implied that God passed his God nature down to Jesus. Therefore, Jesus was fully God, not a demigod.
Few modern Protestants really dig into this to try to understand it. Most seem happy to say Jesus is both God and man, and leave it at that.
As part of my research for this study, I looked up a Catholic teacher to see how Catholics understand the word begotten, what that word means to them.
Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary, but begotten by God the Father.
They see two different things happening in the birth of Jesus. He was born like men are born, but he was begotten by God the Father as though "begotten" is a different kind of birth.
That isn't a meaning of the word "begotten" anywhere else in the Bible. It is also an eisegesis fiction because there is no Biblical support for the idea.
‘begotten not made’ - Jesus Christ was not a created being, like humanity. He is not a creature. He is God."
I think we can all agree that Jesus is not the same as us. They're really saying that his essence is God-essence, God-stuff, and that he's not really a man, but he is a man also in a sense.
These explanations lack clarity to the point that they sound like dictates the teacher was taught to say, but he doesn't understand himself, and therefore can't explain. These dictates are the remains of the fortifications from a battle 15 centuries ago.
Begotten (vs. born) expresses the divinity that was passed down from God the Father to Jesus Christ."
This is also pure eisegesis.
As I said earlier, the Catholic view treats a human as a sack that contains something, not as the Bible describes us - a triune nature of body, mind, and spirit.
Summarizing his points, he is saying that "begotten" describes a different kind of birth, one where the divine nature is passed down.
Is that what the word "begotten" means?
For God loved the world in this way: so much that he would give up his Son, the only one, so that everyone who trusts in him shall not be lost, but he shall have eternal life. (John 3:16)
You might ask, "Where's the 'begotten'?" because you would expect to see the phrase "only begotten" here, but this translation does not have it.
In both Greek and Aramaic, a single word is used here, which is being translated into English as two English words, "only" and "begotten." This single word, the "monogenes" that I mentioned before, is that word.
It is used in other places in the Bible that are not references to Jesus. The Catholics teach that "only begotten" refers to a special kind of birth where the transference of the nature of God happens. That isn't true of the word generally. If they claim that its references to Jesus are a special case, that's not supported by the Bible.
The word "monogenes" is translated as "only begotten", but it is translated in other ways in the Bible. It is translated as "only son", "only daughter", "only child", and "only one", as it is here. In those cases, it's ordinary people talking about ordinary children, and it only means someone was the father of an only child.
This quote is from Strong's Concordance, which tells us the meaning of words used in the Bible. It is a note for the meaning of the Greek word "monogenes".
"The [Greek] term "monogenés" is used in the New Testament to describe a unique or singular relationship, often in the context of a parent-child relationship." (Strong’s 3439)
It refers to the specialness of a person because of a singular relationship. Therefore "monogenes," which literally means "only child," is focused on the "only" aspect. It's about a relationship that is singular in some way, usually the singular child of a parent.
For example, if you have an only son or an only daughter, that person is very special to you because they are the only one. If you lose that one, you've lost your only child. You have no children after that.
In Jesus' time, most families were much larger than they are in our time. It wasn't uncommon to have six, seven, eight children, or even more. If you were a person who only had one child, losing that child was a disaster. If you had 12 children and you lost one, that's horribly sad, but you have other children who can comfort you.
The word "monogenes" says nothing about the birth of the child. The Catholic church lost its focus on "mono" to focus on "genes" and decided it referred to a special act by God to transfer God-nature. All of which is completely made up.
If we look at different translations, we'll notice something.
that he would give up his Son, the only one, (Aramaic direct)
As we saw, a direct translation from Aramaic manuscripts gives the clearest and most correct English text. The word "begotten" is not there; instead the word "one" is used. The words "child," "boy," and "girl" are not appropriate. The word "son" could be used, but that would be redundant.
As a separate clause, the "only one" clause focuses the words that came before it, "his son." It is making it clear that a special relationship exists because he is the only one. It asks the readers to consider how they would feel about giving up an only son.
that the son, the only-begotten, he gave (Greek direct)
English translations from the Greek throw in the word "begotten," presumably so that Catholics will buy their translations. The word "child" is an equally valid choice and would be clearer. This translation still shows that "only-begotten" emphasizes the specialness of the relationship with "the son."
he gave His only begotten Son (English smoothed – NKJV)
Smoothed translations from the Greek simplify the clauses to make the text more readable, but lose the importance of the singular relationship to understanding what the verse is saying.
When that clause is gone, and the reader is left with "only begotten Son," the reader doesn't know if it is "only-begotten Son" or "only begotten-Son." That makes it easier to think the focus is on the word “begotten”, and think that it somehow means more than the word really means.
The word "begotten" in the phrase "only begotten son" is redundant. All it needs to say is "only Son" or "only one", as we saw in the other translations. The word "begotten" isn't adding anything, and it really should be removed. Again Catholic readership may be the reason it is that way.
As was said above, "monogenes" is used in the Bible to refer to people other than Jesus. I want you to see a couple of those verses.
And when he approached the gate of the city, he saw as a dead man was being escorted who had been the only son of his mother, […]. 13 But Yeshua saw her and he was moved with pity for her (Luke 7:12-13)
The English word "only begotten" would not be appropriate here because his birth is not relevant, as the son is a man. What matters is the singular relationship, only son of a woman, which is a meaning of "monogenes".
And one man from that crowd called and he said, "Teacher, I beg you, restore my son to me; he is the only child I have." (Luke 9:38)
In this case, the man adds the "only son" information to strengthen his appeal to Jesus. The "word" begotten would not be useful here, as that would be saying "he is the only son I've been able to father," which sounds more like an appeal to heal the man instead of his son.
We started by looking at the commonly-seen Trinitarian diagram and recognized that it's unclear. I produced an improved drawing from that and then another. The final result was clearer and closer to what the Bible says. It also contained more information.
Then we looked at the Nicene Creed, and saw that there's some Catholic thought about the nature of Jesus embedded in it. That is what you would expect, because most of the bishops who worked on it were Catholic bishops. Also it was generated during a moment in time when the Catholic church was trying to deal with people who had crazy views.
Then we spent quite a bit of time looking at the Catholic understanding of the nature of Jesus. We came to see that it doesn't make any sense. It would mean that the eternal God died when Jesus' body died, or at least part of the eternal God died when Jesus' body died. That problem isn't something newly discovered. Many people have recognized that problem before, as well as other problems.
Then we zeroed in on our topic and spent time looking at the Catholic understanding of the word "begotten." We saw that they understand it as meaning a special kind of birth where God intervened to transfer his nature into Jesus.
Then we looked at what the Greek word behind "only begotten" really means, and we dug deep into that. I hope the reader now understands that the word "monogenes" in Greek only refers to that special singular relationship that develops between a parent and an only child.
The word isn't talking about the process of begetting or what happens when you beget, none of that. It's only talking about how special and important and valuable an only-one relationship is when you have that.
We saw that "only begotten Son" is a poor translation, even though a lot of translations use that. I suspected that the correction hadn't happened there to ensure that Roman Catholic readers would read those translations of the Bible.
Bringing this topic back to us, the point of this part of John 3:16 is to show how important this special relationship is between God the Father and the Son, Jesus. We are now in a time when liberals in the church are accusing God the Father of being an abusive father for sending his son to die. The words "only one" tell us to think, instead, of a father with a special relationship to an only son. The decision to put his son through that life and death among humans would not have been trivial or abusive.
That specialness and that importance of Jesus to God the Father is the same as it would be for us if we had an only child. All of our hopes and all of our dreams would ride on that one child. The child would be the embodiment of us that we are sending into the future. All of God's hopes were placed on the Son in the same way.