One of the big issues that Muslims have with Christianity is the Doctrine of the Trinity and the implications that has for the belief that Jesus is God. I thought it might be helpful to pick up on one of those issues. First of all, some Muslims have issues with John 1:18 which says:
“ 18 No one has ever seen God; God the only Son, who[f] is at the Father’s side,[g] he has made him known.”
This is a translation of:
18 θεὸν οὐδεὶς ἑώρακεν πώποτε· [a]μονογενὴς θεὸς ὁ ὢν εἰς τὸν κόλπον τοῦ πατρὸς ἐκεῖνος ἐξηγήσατο.
The key word there is “monogenes” which brings together two words mono meaning “only” and genes which could refer to generation and begetting or to a kind. It’s the same term that we find in John 3:16 as in God’s only begotten son or God’s one and only/unique/one of a kind son.
In this case, it makes logical sense to translate monogenes theos as “only begotten God” or “God, the only begotten”. So woodenly we get:
Noone has ever seen God. The only begotten God (or god, the only begotten) who is in the lap of the father, he has revealed him.
The Muslim argument here is that if there is a god who is generated or begotten then he must be derived from God, there must be a point when his existence begins. This means that they are making the same essential argument that the Arians did. The Son, or as per John 1, The word, was with God at the beginning and was instrumental in creation, so his existence must have started before creation but that places it before time began. So Arians said that “there was a once, when he was not.”
What this should tell us is that the objection raised is not a new one. The early church spent significant time responding to it and you can see how they did in the writings of people like Hilary of Poiters and Athanasius. There are two crucial arguments in response to the argument.
First, that when we talk about begetting or generation, this is not the same as creation. The Word, or the Son, is uncreated. John 1:3 makes it clear that everything was made through him, nothing was made without him. We can draw a line on a page and list all created things on one side, then on the other side list uncreated things. To be clear, the only thing on that side is God. The Word/Son/Jesus is explicitly placed on the God side of the equation.
Note that “generation” is not the same as saying “derived from”. Not only would this make The Son a lesser entity but the Father too would be diminished, giving some of his attributes and powers away to the Son.
Secondly, if The Son is begotten from the Father, then he receives all of his attributes. We find this in John 5 where Jesus says that the Father has life from within himself or is self-existent and grants the Son the same self-existent life from within himself. The Son therefore has attributes including holiness, love, omnipresence, omnipotence and omniscience. He is infinite and eternal. He has all the attributes of God.[1]
It is from this that we get the term “eternal generation”. Furthermore, we can also consider the point that before creation, there wasn’t time. So, it is logically impossible to talk of a once when he was not, a time before time. Generation points to the relationship between the Son and Father and it is eternal. The Son is not a derived, lesser God but is fully God.
[1] Note, the description of the Father as “unbegotten” is not describing an attribute but a relationship (or the absence of one).
Faithroots 