Can God Have a Son?

The Qur’an denies that God took a son, and it asks how he could have a son without a wife. Christians deny the wife and the second god. They still say the Son is eternal.

The question

“Son of God” is one of the shortest ways a conversation between Muslims and Christians goes wrong. Muslims hear a sexual claim, or a second god beside God, or a creature promoted into God’s family. Christians hear the eternal relation of the Son to the Father. Each side then answers a sentence the other did not mean.

This page puts the Qur’an’s denial next to what Christians mean. It does not ask anyone to pretend the Qur’an is friendly to the Christian confession. It is not. The work is to see which claim the Qur’an is rejecting, and which claim the Gospel is making. Oneness of God, without a second deity, is Tawhid and Christian monotheism. Father, Son, and Spirit as one God is The Trinity.

What Muslims say

The Muslim refusal is a defense of God’s uniqueness, and it should be stated at full strength. God is one. He does not beget, and he is not born. He has no consort, so a son is the wrong kind of thing to attribute to him. Saying he has taken a son is an atrocity, something the heavens and the earth can barely bear. Christians who say “the Messiah is the son of God” are repeating a claim the Qur’an treats as disbelief. Calling themselves God’s children does not help: if they were his children in the sense they boast of, why does he punish them?

The alternative the Qur’an offers is not an insult to Jesus. He is a messenger, a word God directed to Mary, a spirit from him. He is not God’s son, and God is exalted above having a son. Worship belongs to God alone. A Christian who answers by saying “we just mean God loves Jesus, as a father loves a child” has changed the subject. Muslims already know how to honor a prophet. They are refusing a son.

What the Qur’an denies

Saheeh International. The brackets are in that translation.

Qur’an 19:88–93 (1):

And they say, “The Most Merciful has taken [for Himself] a son.” [89] You have done an atrocious thing. [90] The heavens almost rupture therefrom and the earth splits open and the mountains collapse in devastation [91] That they attribute to the Most Merciful a son. [92] And it is not appropriate for the Most Merciful that He should take a son. [93] There is no one in the heavens and earth but that he comes to the Most Merciful as a servant.

The verb in this translation is “taken.” The son is someone the Most Merciful takes for himself. Verse 93 then says everyone comes to him as a servant. A taken son would be an exception to that, a creature pulled out of the servant class and attached to God.

Qur’an 6:101 asks how a son is possible without a wife.

[He is] Originator of the heavens and the earth. How could He have a son when He does not have a companion [i.e., wife] and He created all things? And He is, of all things, Knowing.

The translators’ bracket says the companion is a wife. That is the picture being refused: a consort, and a son by that consort, and a God who would need one in order to have offspring.

Qur’an 112:1–4 is the short surah Muslims recite as the definition of God.

Say, “He is Allāh, [who is] One, [2] Allāh, the Eternal Refuge. [3] He neither begets nor is born, [4] Nor is there to Him any equivalent.”

Qur’an 39:4 says that if God had intended to take a son, he could have chosen from what he creates.

If Allāh had intended to take a son, He could have chosen from what He creates whatever He willed. Exalted is He; He is Allāh, the One, the Prevailing.

The son in that sentence is chosen from creation. He is one of the things God makes, selected and then called a son. The verse denies the intention. It also describes the son it is talking about: a creature, chosen.

Qur’an 9:30 names the Christian sentence and condemns it. The harsh clause is in the text. Quoting it is not an invitation to repeat it as a tone of voice.

The Jews say, “Ezra is the son of Allāh”; and the Christians say, “The Messiah is the son of Allāh.” That is their statement from their mouths; they imitate the saying of those who disbelieved before [them]. May Allāh destroy them; how are they deluded?

Qur’an 5:72 condemns a related sentence, the flat claim that God is the Messiah.

They have certainly disbelieved who say, “Allāh is the Messiah, the son of Mary” while the Messiah has said, “O Children of Israel, worship Allāh, my Lord and your Lord.”

Qur’an 4:171 is the verse that both honors Jesus and draws the line.

The Messiah, Jesus the son of Mary, was but a messenger of Allāh and His word which He directed to Mary and a soul [created at a command] from Him. So believe in Allāh and His messengers. And do not say, “Three”; desist - it is better for you. Indeed, Allāh is but one God. Exalted is He above having a son.

Qur’an 5:18 is easy to fold into the Jesus question, and it should be kept distinct. It answers people who say they are God’s children and his beloved, not only the claim that the Messiah is God’s Son.

But the Jews and the Christians say, “We are the children of Allāh and His beloved.” Say, “Then why does He punish you for your sins?” Rather, you are human beings from among those He has created. He forgives whom He wills, and He punishes whom He wills.

What Christians mean

Christians deny the picture those verses describe.

They deny that God has a wife. Qur’an 6:101 asks how he could have a son without a companion. The Christian answer to that question is that he does not have a son in that way. There is no consort, no divine mother, and no biological offspring. “Begotten” in Christian speech is not a claim about a birth from a goddess. Mary is the mother of Jesus in his humanity. She is not a partner beside God. Tawhid and Christian monotheism says this at more length, because the fear of a second god is the fear Muslims are actually guarding.

They deny that God looked over creation and took one of his creatures as a son. Qur’an 39:4 is about a son chosen from what God creates. Qur’an 19:88 is about a son taken. Christians say the Son is not acquired. He is not a servant promoted out of the class of servants. John 1:1 (2) says the Word already was, in the beginning, with God, and was God.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

John 1:14 says that Word was made flesh, and it uses the language of the only begotten, from the Father.

And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.

“Made flesh” is the incarnation, a real human life, including a birth from Mary. “In the beginning was the Word” is the claim that this Son was not created in order to fill the role. Galatians 4:4 (4) holds both halves in one sentence: God sent forth his Son, and the Son was made of a woman, under the law.

But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law,

Matthew 3:17 (3) is the voice at Jesus’ baptism, in the Gospel Christians are asking Muslims to read beside the Qur’an.

And lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.

John 5:18 reports how Jesus’ hearers understood the Father-and-Son language. They heard a claim to equality with God, not a claim that God had taken a wife.

Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not only had broken the sabbath, but said also that God was his Father, making himself equal with God.

The Gospel does not add a footnote that they had misunderstood him and that he only meant “God loves me as a father.” The charge of equality sits in the chapter. What Christians do with “equal with God” and with prayer in the same life is If Jesus is God, why did he pray? and The deity of Christ.

Qur’an 5:72 denies that “Allāh is the Messiah,” said as a flat identity. Christians do not say the Father is the Son. They say the Son is God, and the Father is God, and the Father is not the Son. John 1:1 itself has both “the Word was with God” and “the Word was God.” Collapsing that into “God is the Messiah, full stop, and there is no distinction” is not the Christian sentence. The Trinity is where that distinction is spelled out, so this page does not pretend one paragraph can replace it.

Qur’an 112 says God neither begets nor is born, and that there is no equivalent to him. Christians agree there is no equivalent, if an equivalent means a second god. They do not agree that “does not beget” rules out the Son whom John says was in the beginning. They hear “beget” in the Qur’an’s question as the consort-and-offspring picture of Qur’an 6:101. They use “begotten” for the Son’s relation to the Father, the relation of the Word who was with God, not for a birth that would make the Son a creature with a divine mother.

Children of God, and the unique Son

Qur’an 5:18 strikes at a boast: “we are the children of Allāh and His beloved,” answered by “why does He punish you for your sins?” Christians do call believers children of God. Romans 8:15 (5) says they have received the Spirit of adoption, by whom they cry “Abba, Father.”

For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.

Adoption is not the same relation as the unique Son. Believers become children. The Word was the Son in the beginning. Romans 8:15 does not say adopted children are immune from God’s judgment of sin. The Qur’an’s question — why does he punish you? — assumes a boast of immunity. The Gospel’s answer to sin is not the title “child.” It is the Son who was sent, under the law, for those who needed redeeming. A Christian who uses “we are God’s children” to mean “God would never call our sin sin” is not speaking for Romans 8.

So the verses divide. Qur’an 5:18 is about a community calling itself God’s children. Qur’an 9:30 and Qur’an 19:88 are about the Messiah as son. Christians can answer the first with adoption, and they have to answer the second with John 1. Mixing them lets a denial of biological offspring do the work of a denial of the eternal Word.

Follow-up objections

“If he is called Son, he is begotten, and begetting needs a mother.” That is Qur’an 6:101, and Christians agree a mother beside God is the wrong picture. The Son in John 1:1 is not the product of a couple. The birth from Mary is the Word made flesh, which John 1:14 states after it has already said the Word was God.

“‘Taken a son’ covers every version of the claim, including yours.” It covers a son who is taken, and Qur’an 39:4 covers a son chosen from creation. Christians say they are not describing that son. They are describing the Word who was with God in the beginning. If the Qur’an means to deny that claim too, the denial is real, and the two books disagree. The disagreement should be about the eternal Son, not about a wife Christians are not confessing.

“John 1 is one verse, and the Qur’an is clear.” John 1 is the opening of the Gospel, not an isolated slogan, and John 5:18 shows that “Father” language was already heard as equality. The Qur’an is clear that God has not taken a son and has no wife. Clarity on a different proposition does not decide John’s proposition. Read both, and do not paraphrase either into the other.

“Then say ‘three’ and be done.” Qur’an 4:171 says not to say “Three,” and that God is one. Christians agree God is one. They do not agree that Father, Son, and Spirit are three gods, which is the reading of “three” that verse is rejecting in its context of excess about God. What they do say is in The Trinity, in their own words, not in a parody of three deities.

Keep reading

• Tawhid and Christian monotheism
• The Trinity
• The deity of Christ
• If Jesus is God, why did he pray?
• Jesus in the Qur’an and the Gospels