Chapter 18 — The Son of God
The Incarnate Christ and His Critics (Komoszewski & Bowman, 2024)
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"Son of God." It's one of the most familiar phrases in all of Christianity. But do we understand what it means?
The answer depends enormously on who you ask. For Muslims, it's a title that implies God had physical children, a blasphemous idea they rightly reject, though they misunderstand what Christians actually mean by it. For Jehovah's Witnesses, it means Jesus was the firstborn spirit creature God made. For progressive Christians, it's a poetic way of saying Jesus was uniquely in tune with God. For Unitarians, it describes a human being God chose and exalted to a unique role.
For orthodox Christianity, "Son of God" means something far more specific and far more radical: Jesus is the eternal, divine Son who shares fully in the nature of God the Father. The sonship isn't a metaphor, an earned title, or a role assigned at the incarnation. It describes an eternal relationship within the one God.
The Muslim Misunderstanding
Muslim objections to "Son of God" typically assume the title means God had sexual relations in order to produce a son. The Quran addresses this directly: "To him is due the primal origin of the heavens and the earth: how can He have a son when He hath no consort?" (Q 6:101).
That objection is worth taking seriously, because it exposes a real danger: misunderstanding the incarnation in a crudely physical way. But it's also based on a misreading of what Christians actually mean.
When the New Testament calls Jesus the "Son of God," it isn't claiming God fathered a child through physical reproduction. The relationship between Father and Son in the New Testament isn't biological but ontological. It describes an eternal relationship within God's own being. The Son isn't a creation of the Father. He's eternally generated by the Father in a way that belongs to the eternal inner life of God.
That's admittedly beyond our full comprehension. But it isn't blasphemous. It's simply transcendent.
What the Old Testament Sets Up
In the Old Testament, "son of God" could refer to angels (Job 1:6), to Israel as a nation (Exod. 4:22), or to the Davidic king (Ps. 2:7; 89:26-27). None of these uses implied deity. They described special relationships with God: closeness, representation, privilege.
So when Jesus is called "Son of God" in the Gospels, does he fit this older, non-divine pattern? Clearly not, and the New Testament is deliberate about showing why.
John 5:17-18 is decisive: "My Father is working until now, and I am working." The response of the Jewish leaders: "This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God."
They understood. When Jesus called God his Father the way he did, with the intimacy, the exclusivity, the authority he claimed, they recognized it as a claim to divine equality. And they responded accordingly.
John 1:18: The Unique Son, God
One of the most important texts for understanding the Son of God is John 1:18, which, in its best-attested manuscript reading, says: "No one has ever seen God; the only Son, God, who is at the Father's side, has made him known."
The phrase "the only Son, God," or in some translations "the only begotten God," is extraordinary. The Son is described as both "the only Son" and as "God." He's the unique one who's in the closest possible relationship to the Father, "at the Father's side," and who is himself God.
This verse essentially restates what John 1:1 says about the Word. The Son is both with God and is God, the unique one who has always been in the Father's presence and who has now come to make the Father known.
"Begotten, Not Made"
The Nicene Creed, produced in AD 325 in response to the Arian controversy, articulates the orthodox understanding with a phrase that has defined Christian theology ever since: Jesus is "begotten, not made." He wasn't created at a point in time. He was eternally generated, eternally "begotten," by the Father in a way unique to the inner life of God.
This distinction matters enormously. If Jesus was "made," he's a creature. If he was "begotten" in the eternal, divine sense, he shares the Father's nature the way a son shares a father's nature, fully and completely.
The Son of God isn't a lesser God, a second God, or a demigod. He's the eternal Son who's one with the Father in the unity of the Godhead. When you look at the Son, you see the Father (John 14:9). When you know the Son, you know God.
For Us
What does it mean for us that Jesus is the Son of God in this full, eternal sense?
It means that when you come to God through Jesus, you're coming to the Father through his own Son, someone who isn't a go-between but is genuinely God. The relationship you have with Jesus isn't a relationship with a representative who relays your messages to someone else. It's direct access to God himself.
"For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father" (Eph. 2:18).
The Son of God opened the door. And he himself is the door (John 10:9).