In four of the five places the word is used as an adjective modifying “Son,” and in one of these (1:18) the Son is said to be “in the bosom of the Father.” In the one place where it occurs as a substantive (1:14), it is followed by the prepositional phrase “from the Father,” which implies sonship. And so we see that in every occurrence John is using the word as a biological metaphor, in which Christ is the “Only Begotten Son” of the Father.
Is there any doctrinal importance in this? Yes, there is. The biological metaphor, in which the Son (and only the Son) shares the
genus of the Father, conveys the idea that Jesus Christ is a true
genetic Son, having the same divine
nature or
essence as the Father. The meaning of the word μονογενὴς here is not just “only” or “one and only,” as in the RSV, NIV, and ESV translations. John is not saying that the Son is “one of a kind.” He is saying that Christ is the
second of a kind, uniquely sharing the
genus of the Father because he is the only
begotten Son of the Father, as in the KJV, ERV, and NASB. In the early centuries of Christianity, this point of exegesis acquired great importance. During the fourth century a teaching known as the Arian heresy (which maintained that the Son was a created being) threatened the Church, and in response to it the orthodox Fathers emphasized that the Scripture speaks of a
begetting of the Son, not a creation. On that Scriptural basis they maintained that the Son must be understood to be of the same
essence as the Father (ὁμοούσιος τῷ πατρί). They further explained that when Scripture speaks of this “begetting” it refers to something taking place
in eternity, not within time, and so there were never a time when the Father was without the Son. The orthodox teaching on this subject was set forth in the Creed adopted by the Council of Nicæa in A.D. 325:
| Πιστευομεν εις ενα θεον πατερα παντοκρατορα, παντων ορατων τε και αορατων ποιητην. Και εις ενα κυριον Ιησουν Χριστον τον υιον του θεου, γεννθεντα εκ του πατρος μονογενη, τουτεστιν εκ της ουσιας του πατρος, θεον εκ θεου, φως εκ φωτος, θεον αληθινον εκ θεου αληθινου, γεννηθεντα, ου ποιηθεντα, ομοουσιον τω πατρι, δι ου τα παντα εγενετο, τα τε εν τω ουρανω και τα επι της γης· τον δι ημας τους ανθρωπους και δια την ημετεραν σωτηριαν κατελθοντα και σαρκωθεντα και ενανθρωπησαντα, παθοντα, και ανασταντα τη τριτη ημερα, ανελθοντα εις τους ουρανους, και ερχομενον κριναι ζωντας και νεκρους. Και εις το αγιον πνευμα. Τους δε λεγοντας, οτι ην ποτε οτε ουκ ην, και πριν γεννηθηναι ουκ ην, και οτι εξ ουκ οντων εγενετο, η εξ ετερας υποστασεως η ουσιας φασκοντας ειναι, [η κτιστον,] τρεπτον η αλλοιωτον τον υιον του θεου, [τουτους] αναθεματιζει η καθολικη [και αποστολικη] εκκλησια. | We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father the only begotten; that is, of the essence of the Father, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, of one substance (ὁμοούσιον) with the Father; by whom all things were made both in heaven and on earth; who for us men, and for our salvation, came down and was incarnate and was made man; he suffered, and the third day he rose again, ascended into heaven; from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. And in the Holy Ghost. But those who say: ‘There was once when he was not;’ and ‘He was not before he was made;’ and ‘He was made out of nothing,’ or, ‘He is of another substance’ or ‘essence,’ or ‘The Son of God is created,’ or ‘changeable,’ or ‘alterable’—they are condemned by the holy catholic and apostolic Church. 10 |
Athanasius in his
Defence of the Nicene Definition (ca. 353), points to the word μονογενής in John 1:14 as one Scriptural proof for the teaching.
It has been shown above, and must be believed as true, that the Word is from the Father, and the only Offspring proper to Him and natural. For whence may one conceive the Son to be, who is the Wisdom and the Word, in whom all things came to be, but from God Himself? However, the Scriptures also teach us this.... John in saying, “The Only-begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him,” spoke of what He had learned from the Saviour. Besides, what else does “in the bosom” intimate, but the Son’s genuine generation from the Father?
11
The Nicene Creed was revised at the Council of Constantinople in A.D. 381, and in this revised form (known as the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed) it continues to be used by the Greek Orthodox Church, the Roman Catholic Church, and by some Protestant churches, as a confession of faith. Most Lutherans recite this Creed during their worship services at least once a month. Even those who do not use this Creed in their liturgies generally acknowledge the correctness of its teaching. Most Protestant confessions and summaries of doctrine have incorporated its language. For instance, the
Westminster Confession (used as a doctrinal standard in conservative Presbyterian churches) reflects the Nicene teaching of the eternal generation of the Son in one of its paragraphs concerning the Trinity: “In the unity of the Godhead there be three persons, of one substance, power, and eternity: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost: the Father is of none, neither begotten, nor proceeding; the Son is eternally begotten of the Father; the Holy Ghost eternally proceeding from the Father and the Son.” (chapter 2, paragraph 3.) In this confession, a Scripture reference following the words “eternally begotten of the Father” points to John 1:14 and 1:18, as support for the doctrine.
If the word “begotten” as applied to Christ has had such importance in the history of Christian doctrine, why have some modern versions of the Bible omitted the “begotten” in their renderings of the verses quoted above?
It is because many modern scholars have rejected the interpretation of Scripture embodied in the Nicene Creed. These scholars maintain that the Nicene Creed’s interpretation of Scripture is wrong, and they argue that the traditional rendering “only begotten” represents a dogmatically-motivated misinterpretation of the Greek word μονογενής. As one Baptist scholar puts it,
The phrase “only begotten” derives directly from Jerome (340?-420 A.D.) who replaced
unicus (only), the reading of the Old Latin, with
unigenitus (only begotten) as he translated the Latin Vulgate. Jerome’s concern was to refute the Arian doctrine that claimed the Son was not begotten but made. This led Jerome to impose the terminology of the Nicene creed (325 A.D.) onto the New Testament.
12
This author gives the translators who have preferred “only begotten” too little credit, as if this phrase in the early English versions were merely an unthinking imitation of the Vulgate’s
unigenitus, and retained in some modern versions only by the force of a verbal tradition. But the translators of the King James Version were not just imitating the Vulgate when they translated μονογενής as “only begotten.” They translated it thus because they understood it thus, in agreement with the interpretation of the word given in the Nicene Creed. And the author’s contention that Jerome imposed the terminology of the Nicene creed onto the Scriptures when he used
unigenitus is unjustifiable. It is no imposition on the word to translate it thus.
13 Athanasius and the other Greek Fathers of the early fourth century did not need any Latin version to interpret this word for them, and in their disputes with the Arians they frequently explained it in the sense, “only-begotten,” with exegetical emphasis on the “begotten.” In one place Athanasius says very plainly that Christ is called “Only-begotten, because of his generation from the Father.”
14 In other places his use of the word is so connected with other words for “begetting” that it is impossible to suppose that it did not carry the meaning “only begotten.”
15 If this were not enough, modern scholarly support for this understanding of the word is certainly not lacking either. “Only-begotten” is given as a sense for μονογενής in Lust’s
Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint (2nd ed., Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2003). In the 2nd ed. of the BAGD lexicon (1979) it is said that “the meanings
only, unique may be quite adequate for all its occurrences” in the Johannine literature (p. 527), but the lexicon also presents the traditional view, in which the word is understood to mean “only-begotten.” See also the
article on monogenes by Büchsel in Kittel’s
Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, vol. 4, pp. 737-41. Büchsel concludes that in John’s Gospel the word denotes “more than the uniqueness or incomparability of Jesus,” because it also “denotes the origin of Jesus ... as the only-begotten.” For a full discussion of this matter see John V. Dahms, “The Johannine Use of
Monogenes Reconsidered,”
New Testament Studies 29 (1983), pp. 222-232. Dahms concludes, “the external evidence, especially from Philo, Justin, and Tertullian, and the internal evidence from the context of its occurrences, makes clear that ‘only begotten’ is the most accurate translation after all.”
16 On the popular level, the recently published
Reformation Study Bible (Ligonier Ministries, 2005), edited by a panel of respected conservative scholars, includes this note on the phrase “the only Son” in John 1:14 — “This phrase translates a single Greek word and explicitly points to the eternal generation of the Son in the Trinity.”
17
The truth is, those who do not acknowledge this meaning of the word μονογενής in the Johannine writings are themselves dogmatically motivated. Their preferred translation—“only”—is an undertranslation which hides from view a Scriptural
datum that supports the Christology of the ancient Creed but which happens to be unpopular with modern theologians.
There is a tendency among modern theologians to “divide the Substance” of the Godhead (cf. the warning against this in the
Athanasian Creed) by positing such independence and equality of the Persons of the Trinity that we can no longer conceive of them as being one God. Some modern theologians have little use for the term ὁμοούσιος (“one essence”), and they cannot abide the idea that there is any ontological priority of the Father in the Trinity, because this is too “hierarchical” and “patriarchal” for our egalitarian age. The Son and the Spirit must be made totally equal to the Father in all respects, even if it means making them into three Gods. This trend is largely driven by liberal theologians who favor the new “social Trinity” concept (Moltmann being prominent among them), which imagines the Trinity to be like a voluntary society of persons who are not ontologically connected.
http://www.bible-researcher.com/only-begotten.html
