WHATEVER HAPPENED TO ‘BEGOTTEN’?
“For God so loved the world that He gave His only
begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have
everlasting life.” John. 3:16. (cf. Jn. 1:18)
For almost two thousand years the
most famous verse in the Bible has been the one quoted above.
To day, I am almost sure it still remains so, but I
wonder if the average man in the street has any idea of what John actually
meant, when he referred to Jesus as God’s “only begotten Son”.
Sadly many Christians, for the
last one hundred years or so, have grown up with that same blank space in their
knowledge bank, for gone from the majority of our modern Bibles is the
adjective “begotten”. Some versions which do retain “begotten”, will drop the
pronoun “His” and add the definite article “the”, forcing the idea that Jesus is “the only
begotten Son”, one unique, but not necessarily the Second Person of a Godhead,
thus making Him a somewhat “lesser god”.
Whilst it is certainly true that Jesus is
a “unique Son” and may be seen to be the one-off “unique and only Son of God”,
different to all who subsequently follow Him simply because all others come
into this world by the act of procreation between a man and a woman.
Some critics of our older translations contend that
the concept of Jesus being the" only begotten son" of the Father was
invented in the fourth century.
It is said that Jerome placed this idea into the Latin
Bible to refute the claims made by Bishop Arius (d. 336) and his associates,
that the Father alone was really God and Jesus was created and not begotten of
the Father..
For some four
hundred years and more, John 1:18, including the words ‘monogenes huios’, were
universally translated as “No man hath seen God at any time, the only
begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.” Reflecting
the understanding of the early translators
Strong’s dictionary reinforces this rendering with the meanings:
“only-born, ie. Sole:-only begotten, child”. (No. 3439 Strong’s Concordance).
It is true that some early manuscripts render “begotten” in John 1:18 as
‘monogenes theos’ implying that Jesus is “.....the only begotten God” (NASB and
others) but one must be very careful how one chooses to understand the meaning
of these words.
Many of our
more recent translations use these contentious texts but thankfully some are
more circumspect in their renderings.
Some versions
of the NIV for example, happily read thus: “No one has ever seen God, but
the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with
the Father, has made him known”. Such is the scope of the “thought for
thought” method of translation. Perhaps they were closer in this instance,
however, they had to change their translation four times! To have any
Bible say “...The only begotten God” is to leave a cloud over the true
Divinity of the Son and allows the statement to appear as an oxymoron, for who
but the cults and false religions hold that Jesus was in fact a created being,
even though he be a “god”.
Such thinking
aligns with the erroneous Jehovah’s Witnesses who for example, hold that Jesus
is simply a created “god” (John 1:1) so it should not surprise that John 1: 18 reads the same way.
The Mormons too have Jesus as a
created God - in fact it is said that Jesus was the son of Adam and his goddess
wife, each becoming “gods” at their deaths. (I kid you not).
That Christ is God, the Son, born
of a woman and come in the flesh as a human person, is of no debate to those who
love and trust Him for their eternal well being.
To consider for even one moment
that John the Apostle would so easily contradict himself concerning the nature
of Christ is most certainly a no-brainer!
We must look to John’s summary of
his Gospel to make clear his meaning concerning Christ in these two Scriptures.
In John 20:30-31 we have John’s
reason for penning his great account of Jesus Christ the Lord. His purpose was
to ensure that his readers would come to an understanding of who Christ was,
why He was here.
“And truly Jesus did many other signs in
the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written that you may
believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may
have life in His name”.
His telling of the Good News must
be free from confusion or error, for even one contradiction would be one error
too many, for the words of the writing were given to John (and the other
writers of the New Testament) either under Devine inspiration, or from John’s
own memory and expression.
For John to describe his beloved
friend and Lord at once being both ‘a begotten Son” and “a begotten God” would
make a mockery of Divine inspiration, and would expose a grave
miss-understanding of Christ’s incarnation.
We must reject those manuscripts
of old which allow such contradictions and continue to preach the Gospel to the
man in the street as our forefathers did.
A Church confused in doctrine is
nothing less than an impotent menace and
a Church holding aloft a thousand different English translations of the Greek
and Hebrew languages is little better.
As Paul admonished, we stand on
the truth, for if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare
himself to the battle? Rod Rowland
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