Farouk wrote:
"'Only begotten' in
John 3.16 refers to the unique relationship between the Father and the Son, and not to the Lord Jesus' physical birth."
.......................................................................
“Only
begotten”
(monogenes)
Anything that is “begotten” or “born” (or a “son”), then, is something that at one time
did not exist and then was
brought into existence. (E.g., Adam, the creation of God was called the “
SON of God” - Luke 3:38.) This does not refer simply to Jesus’ earthly existence but also to his original heavenly existence as shown by 1 John 4:9 which refers to the time when Jesus was “in the
beginning with God,” even “
before the world was.” - (John 1:1, 2; 17:5, 24). At that time he was already “the
only-begotten [
monogenes] Son.” - 1 John 4:9,
NASB, ASV, KJV. Even the highly trinitarian NT Greek scholar, W. E. Vine, in his
An Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words, p. 813, admits that Jesus was the Father’s “only-begotten Son”
before he came to earth.
How can we understand the Son of God being God’s
only-begotten? This would have to mean that the Son was the first (firstborn) and only (only-begotten) creation by God himself. The rest of creation was done through the Son and not directly by the Father.
Since angels are called “gods” and “sons of God” in the Bible itself (see DEF-4, 5), Jesus cannot properly be called the “
only” god or the “
only” Son of God as some trinitarians
want to translate
monogenes (“only-begotten”) at John 1:18. But they (as trinitarians) still don’t like Jesus being described as “only-
begotten” because they insist on his eternal existence (as God).
So some try to claim that the last half of the word
monogenes is not from
ginomai (“to come into being” [‘born’]) but from
genos (“kind”). Hence, they claim, the term refers to “the only one of a class or kind.” Thus some trinitarian translations speak of Jesus as the “
only Son” (see
RSV, NEB, JB, AT quotes at beginning) rather than the “only-
begotten Son” of God (John 1:14; 3:16, 18; 1 Jn 4:9) -
KJV, ASV, NASB.
However, even
if we accept the claim that
genos is the correct source word for
monogenes, we need to examine the claim of some trinitarians that
genos does not include the meaning of “begotten”/”made.” The Greek word
genos has “offspring” and “birth” as some of its meanings even in my
trinitarian NT Concordances (
Young’s Analytical Concordance of The Bible; Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible; and New American Standard Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, p. 1640).
The very trinitarian W. E. Vine in his highly-regarded
An Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words, p. 805, admits that
genos is “(akin to
ginomai, to
become), [and] denotes an
offspring.”
Yes, even the trinitarian
RSV and
NEB (noted above as rendering
monogenes as “only” in certain verses relating to Jesus - including Jn 1:18) were forced to use the proper meaning of “offspring” for
genos itself at Rev. 22:16 - “I
Jesus....am the root and
offspring [genos] of David.” Compare Acts 17:28, 29 - “’For we indeed are his
offspring [genos].’ Being then God’s offspring
[genos], we ought not to think that the Deity is like gold, silver or stone...” -
RSV.
According to certain trinitarians, then, the above scriptures plainly state that Jesus must be one of the
kind [
genos] of
David [or of the David
kind]- Rev. 22:16, and
Christians and non-Christian Athenians must be of the God kind [
genos] - Acts 17:28, 29. This is obviously ridiculous and the proper meaning of “begotten” or “made/produced” cannot be avoided in these scriptures! Christians (and the men of Athens whom Paul was speaking to) were
made or
created by God and are His
genos (“offspring” or “begotten”) in that sense!
And, if we want a more neutral source, we could go to a secular authority - the ultimate authority for speakers of American English -
Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (Unabridged). In tracing the source of the prefix
gen- this outstanding reference book tells us it comes from the Greek
genos which comes from “the stem of [the Greek]
gignesthai to be born.” We can see then that the Greek word
genos literally must include the meaning of “birth,” “production,” “creation” [whether you choose to translate it as “race,” “kind,” etc. or not] and cannot mean an only kind (
which has always existed)!
And, perhaps more important, that same highly-regarded authority tells us that the suffix
-gen comes from the Greek suffix -
genes [as in
monogenes above] which means “born, fr[om] root of
gignesthai to be
born.” (Also see
-gen in
Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary.) Here we can see that the Greek suffix in
monogenes actually comes from
gignesthai (not
genos which some trinitarians prefer but which also comes from
gignesthai anyway) and it truly, properly means to be
born.
Gignesthai itself is simply the infinitive form (“
to be born”) of
gignomai (or
ginomai) which are present tense forms of this same passive verb. - see pp. 168, 85, 86, and 97 in Marshall’s
New Testament Greek Primer, Zondervan, 1962.
(Continued in my next post)