Was Jesus Created? “Only Begotten,” Jesus as Lord, and Learning about the Bible
TL;DR:
This page presents excerpts from an extended email exchange with a Jehovah’s Witness concerning biblical interpretations about Jesus’ nature and divinity.
It explains that the Greek word monogenēs (“only begotten”) means “unique” or “one of a kind.” It does not mean “created” and cannot be used to argue that Jesus was a created being. Instead, it points to Jesus’s divine nature. It echoes C. S. Lewis’s words in Mere Christianity that what God “begets” is God.
The page also identifies writers such as John Wesley and E. Stanley Jones whose insights can help us understand and live out biblical truth.
- The phrase “only begotten Son” used in older English
Bible translations of John 3:16 does not mean that Jesus was created. Instead, the Greek word
translated as "begotten" is a reference to a relationship without reference to origin.
- The words "one God, the Father . . . and there is but one
Lord, Jesus Christ" in 1 Corinthians 8:6 do not mean, "Instead of many gods and
lords, there is only one of each." What Paul means is that the idols worshipped in Corinth have
no power.
- The Holy Spirit is one of the best Bible teachers we can have.
8. Responses to Questions from a Jehovah’s Witness
“As usual, Paul went into the synagogue, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures.” — Acts 17:2, 2011 NIV
Excerpts from an email exchange with a Jehovah's Witness
One sad thing about our email exchanges is that my Jehovah's Witness friend rarely
responded to my answers or asked me follow-up questions. So we had very few real
“conversations” discussing anything in depth.
- Jehovah's Witness question: Doesn't "only begotten" clearly mean
that Jehovah created Jesus?
- My response: The Greek word translated as "only begotten" is monogenes.
That word is used several times in Scripture and particularly to describe Jesus in John's
writing. Although older translations rendered monogenēs as “only begotten,” many modern scholars understand it to mean “unique,” “one and only,” or “one of a kind.” For this reason, many modern English Bible translations use “one and only” or similar wording in passages such as John 3:16.
Supporting this understanding is the way the Septuagint (the ancient Greek translation of the
Old Testament) renders Psalm 25:16, "Turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am lonely
(monogenes) and afflicted" (NASB). In this passage monogenes clearly means
“alone” rather than having anything to do with descent. In John 3:16, “begotten” describes the Son’s unique relationship with the Father without implying that the Son was created.
Have you read any writings by C. S. Lewis? He’s the author of works such as The Screwtape
Letters and The Chronicles of Narnia. In his book Mere Christianity, Lewis
says:
"To beget is to become the father of something;
to create is to make something. When you beget something, you beget something that is the same
kind as yourself. A man begets human babies, a beaver begets beavers, and a bird begets eggs
that become baby birds. But when you make, you make of a kind different from yourself. Birds
make nests, beavers make dams, a man makes a wireless set. . . What God begets is God; just as
what man begets is man. What God creates is not God; just as what man creates is not
man."
Lewis’s point is that what is begotten shares the nature of the one who begets it; therefore, the Son shares the divine nature. If John had meant that God created Jesus, he could have said so.
When "only begotten" refers to Christ, it means "unique" and "only beloved." Only begotten
expresses Christ's eternal union with the Father in the Godhead. What monogenes does
directs our attention to God’s character, will, love, and grace as they are communicated in the person of Jesus Christ.
- Jehovah's Witness question: Did you know that Jesus is the only
thing God actually created? According to John 1, it was Jesus who then created everything.
- My answer: I'm glad that you agree Jesus was the Creator of all things. What's more,
does it say anywhere in Scripture that God "created" Jesus? No, it does not. Having
established that, let's look at the following Scriptures:
- “Blessed be Abram by God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth.” — Genesis
14:19
- "But Abram said to the king of Sodom, 'I have raised my hand to the LORD, God Most
High, Creator of heaven and earth, and have taken an oath’” — Genesis 14:22
- "Is this the way you repay the LORD, O foolish and unwise people? Is he not your Father,
your Creator, who made you and formed you?” — Deuteronomy 32:6
- "Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator
of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can
fathom.” — Isaiah 40:28
Don't these passages clearly refer to Yahweh as Creator? If
Yahweh is the Creator, and Jesus created all things (as you agree that John 1 says He did), then
these passages provide strong support for identifying Jesus with Yahweh—unless, of course, you’re going to say we shouldn’t take those
Scriptures literally. To be sure, you have said: "The scriptures decide what is literal and what
is not literal, not us." In none of these passages is there any indication the words are not to be
taken literally. Therefore, following your principle, we must take these words literally.
Right?
As Paul talks about Jesus in his letter to the Colossians, he
says that “all things have been created through him and for him” (Colossians 1:16, 2011 NIV). If Jesus had been
Michael the archangel—rather than Yahweh Himself—would He have really created all things
for Himself? Would an angel—even an archangel—have dared to do that? Would not such a
statement be directly contrary to Isaiah 43:7, which says God or Yahweh created "everyone ... for
my glory”? If Jesus is fully God, then there’s no contradiction between the passage in Isaiah
and the one in Colossians. If Jesus was not Yahweh, then don't you have two contradictory
statements?
- Jehovah's Witness question: How do you explain 1 Corinthians 8:6
("Yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live;
and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we
live”)?
- My answer: First, let's look at the whole chapter. To really understand any Scripture
verse, we need to see it in the original context in which it appears. The principal issue in 1
Corinthians 8 is what Christians in Corinth were to do about buying food that had been
previously sacrificed to idols.
In that discussion, Paul declares to the Corinthian believers that the idols they see throughout
their city have no power. Most people in Corinth followed religions that had multiple gods. Paul
declares to the believers in Corinth that there is only one God and one Lord.
Paul is not trying to say to the Corinthians: "Instead of many
gods and lords, there is only one of each." Paul is saying there is only one God, only one Lord.
Isn't that clear when he uses the exact same phraseology to describe both God the Father and
Jesus Christ ("through whom all things came and through whom we live")? Also, as Paul
continues the discussion in verse eight, he doesn't continue talking about both God and Jesus as
though they were separate. He only talks about God.
In chapter 9, Paul mentions Moses. Doesn’t the Pentateuch repeatedly refer to
Yahweh by Hebrew titles and names rendered as “Lord”?
Among those passages is Genesis 16:13: “She
gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: ‘You are the God who sees me.’” Another example
would be the clear reference to Yahweh as Lord in Genesis 24:12: "Then he prayed, 'O Lord, God
of my master Abraham.'"
Now, if the Holy Spirit
inspired Moses to refer to Yahweh as Lord and the same Holy Spirit inspired Paul to say there is
only one Lord and that Lord is Jesus, wouldn't that mean that Jesus is Yahweh?
Paul’s proclamation of the gospel to the Gentiles reflects Isaiah’s promise that the Messiah would be “a light for the Gentiles.”
Paul says, "There is only one Lord." Do you think Paul had forgotten about all those Old
Testament Scriptures which refer to God as
"Lord"? Had he just badly misunderstood them?
Or did he deliberately use that wording to proclaim that Jesus was God Himself?
- Jehovah's Witness question: How long have you been knowing the
Bible, and who taught you the Bible?
- My answer: Two great questions. I'm hoping you're asking these sincerely and not
just hoping to find something to criticize me for.
The Bible has been a part of my life for six decades. I
actually read it all the way through—cover to cover—when I was about 10 years old. To be
sure, there were lots of things I didn't understand in that first reading. However, that initial
reading was helpful because it gave me a sense of the storyline running all through those
66 books. It gave me a sense that the Bible was not just a collection of
stand-alone stories or thoughts that were randomly thrown together. It also made me think of
each of the individual books as a unified document rather than a compilation of verses
(thoughts) that didn't build on each other and that had little or no connection to each
other.
As to who taught me the Bible, the first "teacher" that came
to mind was the Bible itself. Doesn’t, for example, Moses’ retelling of the events of Exodus and
Numbers in Deuteronomy, in a sense, become a teaching of what the content of Exodus and
Numbers means? Doesn't Jesus' use of passages from Leviticus and Deuteronomy in answer to
the question about the "greatest commandment" teach us what we should see as key principles in
the Old Testament? Doesn't Hosea's life story teach us something about the phrase in John 3:16
that says, "God so loved the world"? Doesn't the "faith chapter" in Hebrews teach us the key
point about several Old Testament figures? Doesn’t the book of Habakkuk illustrate what it means
to trust in the Lord even amid bewildering circumstances, as Proverbs 3:5–6 urges (“trust in the
Lord with all your heart . . .")? Doesn't Peter's
sermon on the day of Pentecost become a teaching about what the life of Christ recorded in the
Gospels means?
Well, I could go on and on, but hopefully, you get the idea. I think the various books of the Bible
are sometimes the best at explaining what other books in the Bible have to say.
In addition to the Bible books themselves, another good
teacher I've had of the Bible is God the Holy Spirit. John 16:7-13 records the words of Jesus:
"Very truly I tell you, it is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Advocate
will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you. When He comes, He will prove the
world to be in the wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment: about sin, because people do
not believe in me; about righteousness, because I am going to the Father, where you can see me
no longer; and about judgment, because the prince of this world now stands condemned. . . When
He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth."
So, the Holy Spirit has been one of my great Bible teachers.
As to human teachers, I think of people who've taught me
through what they've written. There was a man named John
Wesley who lived in the 1700s and whose writings have been key to understanding God's call to
holy living as it is revealed in Scripture. There was William Carey
whose writings in the early 1800s were a call to see how often God's heart for all peoples of the
earth shows through in the Bible. There was Ray Stedman, a pastor from California, whose book
Body Life was helpful in seeing clearly what passages in Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12,
and Ephesians 4 were saying about the Church. The writings of Dietrich
Bonhoeffer, a German pastor who died in one of Hitler’s concentration camps, helped me better understand the biblical call to be fully committed to the lordship of Jesus Christ and His Kingdom. The writings of missionary to India E. Stanley Jones have been very helpful in understanding
Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.
In high school, I spent a year with young friends working through Paul's letter to the Romans. By
the end of that year, we knew its wording backward and forward. Those friends—although
they were just high school students -- were some of my teachers concerning the book of Romans.
Key pastors who helped guide my learning of scripture have included men like Hardy Powers,
Millard Reed, Harold Daniels, E. S. Phillips, and Ponder Gilliland.
Some wonderful Sunday school teachers who played key roles in my journey with the Lord and the
Bible were Peggy Poteet, a university English professor; Vera Clark, who operated a trucking business
with her husband; Harper Cole, a university business professor; and Jim Posey, a respected lawyer,
and his wife, Shirley.
Then there is my friend Marty Michelson, who has studied the Old Testament in such depth that I
get the feeling he had coffee this morning with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. There is Hal
Cauthron, whose specialty is the writings of John and who has helped me see clearly the themes
running through those writings.
Well, I could go on and on with the list of people who've been instrumental in my understanding
of Scripture. But I think you get the idea that many wonderful people from different walks of life
and several different centuries have contributed to my understanding.
-- Howard Culbertson, hculbert@snu.edu
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