Perhaps no part of the Injil (Gospel) arouses as much controversy and discussion as the title ‘Son of God’ which is used of the Prophet Isa al Masih (PBUH) repeatedly through the Injil (Gospel).  This term in the Injil (Gospel) is the main reason why many suspect that the Injil has been corrupted.   The issue of the corruption of the Injil is examined from the Qur’an (here), the sunnah (here), as well as scientific textual criticism (here).  The overwhelming conclusion is that the Injil (Gospel) is not corrupted.  But then what do we make of this term ‘Son of God’ in the Injil?

Is it contrary to the Oneness of God as expressed in Surah Al-Ikhlas? (Surah 112 – The Sincerity)

Say: He is God, the One and Only;

God, the Eternal, Absolute;

He begetteth not, nor is He begotten;

And there is none like unto Him. (Surah Al-Ikhlas 112)

As Surah Al-Ikhlas, the Taurat also asserts the Oneness of God when the Prophet Musa PBUH declared:

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. (Deuteronomy 6:4)

So how to understand ‘Son of God’?

Sometimes just hearing a term, without trying to understand its meaning, can lead to an incorrect conclusion.  For example, many in the West, react against the term ‘Jihad’ that appears so much in the media.  They believe this term means ‘a crazy fighter’, ‘killing innocent people’, or something similar.  In fact, those who take the time to understand the term will learn that it means ‘struggle’ or ‘effort’ and this can be a struggle against a wide variety of forces, including personal struggle with sin and temptation.  But many do not know this.

We should not fall into the same error with the term ‘Son of God’.  In this article we will look at this term, understanding where it comes from, what it means, and what it does not mean.  We will then be in an informed position with which to respond to this term and to the Injil.

Where does ‘Son of God’ come from?

‘Son of God’ is a title and it does not originate in the Injil (Gospel).  The writers of the gospel did not invent or start the term.  Neither was it invented by Christians.  We know this because it was first used in the Zabur, long before the disciples of Isa al Masih (PBUH) or Christians were alive, in the part inspired by the prophet Dawud (David – PBUH) around 1000 BC.  Let us see where it first occurs.

Why do the nations conspire
    and the peoples plot in vain?

² The kings of the earth rise up
and the rulers band together
against the Lord and against his anointed (= Messiah = Christ), saying,
³ “Let us break their chains
and throw off their shackles.”

⁴ The One enthroned in heaven laughs;
the Lord scoffs at them.
⁵ He rebukes them in his anger
and terrifies them in his wrath, saying,
⁶ “I have installed my king
on Zion, my holy mountain.”

⁷ I will proclaim the Lord’s decree:

He said to me, “You are my son;
today I have become your father.
⁸ Ask me,
and I will make the nations your inheritance,
the ends of the earth your possession.
⁹ You will break them with a rod of iron;
you will dash them to pieces like pottery.”

¹⁰ Therefore, you kings, be wise;
be warned, you rulers of the earth.
¹¹ Serve the Lord with fear
and celebrate his rule with trembling.
¹² Kiss his son, or he will be angry
and your way will lead to your destruction, (Psalm 2)

We see here a conversation between ‘the LORD’ and ‘his anointed’.  In verse 7 we see that ‘the LORD’ (i.e. God/Allah) says to the Anointed that ‘… you are my Son; today I have become your father…’  This is repeated in verse 12 where it admonishes us to ‘Kiss his Son…’.   Since God is speaking and calling him ‘my son’ this is where the title ‘Son of God’ originates.  To whom is this title ‘Son’ given to?  It is to ‘his anointed’.  In other words, the title ‘Son’ is used interchangeably with the ‘anointed’ through the passage.  We saw that Anointed =Messiah = Masih= Christ, and this Psalm is also where the title ‘Messiah’ originated.  So the title ‘Son of God’ originates in the same passage where the term ‘Masih’ or ‘Christ’ has its origins – in the inspired writings of the Zabur written 1000 years before the arrival of the prophet Isa al Masih (PBUH).

Knowing this, allows us to understand the charges laid against Isa at his trial. Below is how the Jewish leaders questioned him at his trial.

Jesus Titles: The Logical Alternatives about ‘Son of God’

⁶⁶ At dawn the elders of the people met together. These included the chief priests and the teachers of the law. Jesus was led to them. ⁶⁷ “If you are the Christ,” they said, “tell us.”

Jesus answered, “If I tell you, you will not believe me. ⁶⁸ And if I asked you, you would not answer. ⁶⁹ But from now on, the Son of Man will be seated at the right hand of the mighty God.”

⁷⁰ They all asked, “Are you the Son of God then?”

He replied, “You are right in saying that I am.”

⁷¹ Then they said, “Why do we need any more witnesses? We have heard it from his own lips.” (Luke 22:66-71)

The leaders first ask Jesus if he is ‘the Christ’ (v. 67).  If I ask someone ‘Are you X?’ it means that I have the idea of X already in my mind.  I am just trying to connect X with the person I am talking to.  In the same way, the fact that the Jewish leaders say to Jesus ‘Are you the Christ?’ means that they had the concept of ‘Christ’ already in their mind.  Their question was about associating the title of ‘Christ’ (or Masih) with the person of Isa.  But then they re-phrase the question a few sentences later to ‘Are you the Son of God then?’  They are treating the titles ‘Christ’ and ‘Son of God’ as equivalent and interchangeable.  These titles were two sides of the same coin.  (Isa does reply in-between with ‘son of man’.  This is another title coming from a passage in the book of Daniel explained e detail here).  Where did the Jewish leaders get the idea to interchange ‘Christ’ and ‘Son of God’?  They got it from Psalm 2 – inspired one thousand years prior to Jesus’ coming.  It was and is logically possible for Jesus to not be the ‘Son of God’ if he was also not the ‘Christ’.  This was the position that the Jewish leaders took as we see above.

It is also logically possible for Isa/Jesus to be both the ‘Christ and ‘the Son of God’.  We see this in how Peter, a leading disciple of Isa (PBUH) answers when asked.  It is written in the Gospel

¹³ [Jesus] asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?”

¹⁴ They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”

¹⁵ “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”

¹⁶ Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

¹⁷ Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. (Matthew 16:13-17)

Peter combines the title “Messiah” with ‘Son of God’ naturally, because it was so established when both titles originated in the Psalms (Zabur).  Jesus accepts this as a revelation from God to Peter.  Jesus is ‘Messiah’ and therefore is also ‘Son of God’.

But it is impossible, self-contradictory even, for Jesus to be ‘the Christ’ but not be the ‘Son of God’ because the two terms have the same source and mean the same thing.  That would be the same as saying that a certain shape is a ‘circle’ but it is not ‘round’.  A shape can be a square and thus not be a circle nor be round.  But if it is a circle then it is also round.  Roundness is part of what it means to be a circle, and to say that a certain shape is a circle but is not round is to be incoherent, or to misunderstand what a ‘circle’ and ‘roundness’ mean.  It is the same with ‘Christ’ and ‘son of God’.  Jesus is both ‘Messiah’ and ‘Son of God’ (the assertion of Peter) or he is neither (the view of the Jewish leaders of that day); but he cannot be one and not the other.

What does ‘Son of God’ mean?

So what does the title mean?   A clue appears in how the New Testament introduces the person of Joseph, one of the earliest disciples (not the Joseph of Pharaoh) and how it uses ‘son of…’.  It says

³⁶ Joseph, a Levite from Cyprus, whom the apostles called Barnabas (which means “son of encouragement”), ³⁷ sold a field he owned and brought the money and put it at the apostles’ feet. (Acts 4:36-37)

You will see that the nickname ‘Barnabas’ means ‘son of encouragement’.  Is the Gospel saying that his literal father’s name was ‘Encouragement’ and this is the reason he is called ‘son of encouragement’?  Of course not!  ‘Encouragement’ is an abstract concept which is difficult to define but is easy to understand by seeing it lived out in an encouraging person.   By looking at the life and person of Joseph someone could ‘see’ encouragement in action and thus understand what ‘encouragement’ means.  In this way Joseph is the ‘son of encouragement’.  He represented ‘encouragement’ in a living way.

“No one has ever seen God” (John 1:18).  Therefore, it is hard for us to really understand the character and nature of God.  What we need is to see God represented in a living way, but that is impossible since ‘God is Spirit’ and thus cannot be seen.  The Gospel thus summarizes and explains the significance of the life and person of Isa al Masih by using both the title ‘Word of God’ and ‘Son of God’

¹⁴ The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth…

¹⁶ Out of his fullness we have all received grace in place of grace already given. ¹⁷ For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. ¹⁸ No one has ever seen God, (John 1:14-18)

How do we know the grace and truth of God?  We see it lived out in the real flesh-and-blood life of Isa al Masih (PBUH).  The disciples could understand the ‘grace and truth’ of God by seeing it in him.  The Law, with its commands, could not give us that visual example.

The Son … coming directly from God

Another use of ‘son of God’ also helps us to understand better what it means in regard to Isa/Jesus (PBUH).  The Gospel of Luke lists the genealogy (father to son) of Jesus going right back to Adam.  We pick up the genealogy at the very end where it says

^{38 …} the son of Enosh, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God. (Luke 3:38)

We see here that Adam is called ‘the son of God’.  Why?  Because Adam had no human father; he came directly from God.  Jesus also had no human father; he was born of a virgin.  As it says above in the Gospel of John he directly ‘came from the Father’.

A ‘son of …’ example from the Qur’an

The Qur’an uses the expression ‘son of …’ in a similar way as the Injil.  Consider the following ayah

They ask thee what they should spend (In charity). Say: Whatever ye spend that is good, is for parents and kindred and orphans and those in want and for wayfarers. And whatever ye do that is good, -God knoweth it well. (Surat al-Baqarah 2:215)

The word ‘wayfarers’ (or ‘travellers’) is literally written as ‘sons of the road’ in the original arabic (‘ibni sabil’ or  ابن السبيل). Why?  Because interpreters and translators have understood that the phrase does not literally referring to ‘sons’ of the road, but that it is an expression to denote a travellers – those who are strongly connected to and dependent on the road.

What ‘Son of God’ does not mean

It is the same with the Bible when it uses the term ‘son of God’.  Nowhere in the Taurat, Zabur or Injil does the term ‘Son of God’ mean that God had sexual relations with a woman and had a literal and physical son as a result.  This understanding was common in ancient Greek polytheism where gods had ‘wives’.  But nowhere in the Bible (al kitab) is this stated.  Certainly this would be impossible since it says that Jesus was born of a virgin – thus no relations.

Summary

We saw here that the Prophet Isaiah around 750 BC had prophesied that one day in his future a Sign directly from the LORD would come

¹⁴ Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel. (Isaiah 7:14)

By definition a son from a virgin would have no human father.  We saw here that the angel Gabriel (Jibril) had declared to Mary that this would happen because ‘the power of the Most High will overshadow you (Mary)’.  This would not come about by unholy relations between God and Mary – that would indeed by blasphemy (shirk).  No, this son would be a ‘holy one’ in a very unique way, proceeding directly from God without human plan or effort.  He would proceed directly from God as words proceed directly from us.  In this sense the Messiah was the Son of God as well as the Word of God.

We saw in the history of the Israelites that in 70 AD they were expelled from the Promised Land to live as exiles and foreigners in all the nations of the world.  For about 2000 years this was where and how the Israelites lived.  As they lived in these different nations they periodically suffered great persecutions.  This was particularly true in Christian Europe.  From Spain, in Western Europe, to the pogroms in Russia the Israelites lived often in a precarious state. The words of Musa given in the Curse were fulfilled as it was written

 … Among those nations you will find no repose, no resting place for the sole of your foot. There the Lord will give you an anxious mind, eyes weary with longing, and a despairing heart.  (Deuteronomy 28:65)

The timeline below shows this 2000 year period which follows after the history of the Israelites from the time of the Bible.  This period is shown in a long red bar.

 

 

You can see that the Israelites through their history went through two periods of exile but the second period of exile was much longer than the first period of exile (which was only from 600 – 530 BC).

The Jews kept their cultural Identity

What is fascinating to me is that though the Israelites never had a central place to put down cultural roots, and though they never grew very numerous (often because of deaths in persecution) they never lost their cultural identity over this 2000 year period.  That is quite remarkable.  Here in the Taurat is a list of nations that lived in the Promised Land at the time of Sign 1 of Musa (PBUH).

So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. (Exodus 3:8)

And from the time of the giving of the Blessings and Curses:

When the LORD your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations—the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you (Deuteronomy 7:1)

Do any of these people still exist, retaining their cultural and linguistic identity?  No they are long gone.  We only know about ‘Girgashites’ from this ancient history.  As the mighty Babylonian, Persian, Greek and then Roman empires conquered these nations they quickly lost their language and identity as they were absorbed into these large empires.  As I live in Canada I see immigrants come here from all over the world.  After the 3^rd generation the culture and language of the country of immigration is long gone.  I immigrated from Sweden to Canada when I was very young.  My son does not speak Swedish.  Neither do the children of my brother or sister.  The Swedish identity of my forebears is disappearing in the Canadian cultural melting pot.  And this is true of almost all immigrants whether they come from China, Japan, Korea, Iran, South America, Africa or the countries of Europe – within three generations it is lost.

So it is remarkable that the Israelites, living in such hostility, forced to flee here and there over the centuries, their global population never exceeding 15 million, never lost their identity – religious, cultural and language – even though this lasted for 2000 years.

Modern genocide of the Jews – The Holocaust

Then the persecutions and pogroms against the Jews reached their peak. Hitler in World War II, through Nazi Germany tried to exterminate all the Jews living in Europe.  And he almost succeeded by creating a mechanized system of exterminating them in gas ovens.  However he was defeated and a remnant of Jews survived.

Modern Re-birth of Israel

And then in 1948 the Jews, through the United Nations, had the remarkable re-birth of the modern state of Israel.  It is remarkable just in the fact, as noted above, that there were people still around who identified themselves as ‘Jews’ after all these years.  But for these words of Musa written down 3500 years ago to come true there had to remain a ‘you’ or a people that could receive the promise. So they remained a people even while in their long exile.

…then the Lord your God will restore your fortunes and have compassion on you and gather you again from all the nations where he scattered you. Even if you have been banished to the most distant land under the heavens, from there the Lord your God will gather you and bring you back. (Deuteronomy 30:3-4)

This is indeed a sign that Allah keeps His Word.

It was also remarkable in that this state was founded in the teeth of opposition.  Most of the nations in that region waged war against Israel in 1948 … in 1956 … in 1967 and again in 1973.  Israel, a very small nation, often found itself at war with five nations at the same time.  Yet not only did they survive, but their territories increased.  In the war of 1967 the Jews regained Jerusalem, their historic capital city that Dawood (David) had founded.

Why did Allah allow the re-birth of Israel

To this day, all these modern developments are very controversial.  Almost no other modern happening arouses so much controversy as the re-birth of Israel and the return of the Israelites – happening almost daily now – from these nations all over the world where they had lived for thousands of years in exile.  And perhaps as you read this you yourself are filled with anger.  It is certainly not that the Jews today are religious – most are very secular or atheistic because of what happened with Hitler’s almost successful genocide.  And it is not that they are necessarily correct.  But the remarkable fact is that what Musa wrote down in the end of the Curses has occurred and is still occurring before our eyes.  Why?  What does this mean?  And how could this happen when they still reject the Masih?  These are important questions.  Answers can be found to all these questions in the Taurat and Zabur.  Maybe you are angry with what I have just written, perhaps bitter.  But perhaps we can hold off final judgment until we understand some of what the prophets wrote down about this remarkable event.  They wrote them down for our benefit – because this will all lead to Judgment – for the Jews and the rest of all alike.  Let us at least be informed of what these prophets wrote so that we can form our judgments from all writings.  We continue with the Zabur to ask why the Jews rejected the Masih.