Question: I looked through some of your answers to questions regarding the trinity. I have difficulties agreeing with some of your answers. You mentioned phrases like "God the Son".., but this term is not found in the Bible – we only know "Son of God" in the Bible. To name God the son is to humanize the eternal God which is wrong and an act of blasphemy. Also, the phrase "eternal son" is not in the Bible. What we find is the begotten son…because we know the Son has a beginning and he is not in existence in the beginning except in the mind of God. I believe in the "Oneness" of God and the Father, son and Holy Spirit are but titles of the One God – Jesus Christ. Deuteronomy 6:4 says it all: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is one Lord…."

Irene

Answer: Dear Irene,

From your message it would seem that you follow a Unitarian line of thinking about the nature of God – or perhaps a Oneness Pentecostal perspective.

You are correct – Son of God is in the Bible and God the Son is not. However, Son of God "humanizes" the eternal God just as much as God the Son. That is – if Jesus is truly the Son, then he is of the same essence, and therefore God. The testimony of Scripture is that Jesus is not less than God, but very God. The gospel of John, as well as Philippians, Hebrews, Colossians and many other passages makes this clear.

You are incorrect in assuming that the use of the word "begotten" infers or teaches that the son of God had a beginning. The son of man had a beginning – for it was in Jesus, a human being, that God came into this world incarnate, and in Jesus existed as God in the flesh – Emmanuel, God with us (Matthew 1).

John 1 uses the Greek word "monogenes" – the word is the compound of mono (sole, only) and genes (generation or gene). It tells us that the only human who was ever born with the "genes" of God was the one and only Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Many passages tell us that the second person of the Trinity, the one who became Jesus, dwelt in eternity. Once again see the first chapter in the Gospel of John, the first 14 verses, along with other references in this gospel, when Jesus told the Jews that he and his Father were one, that he, Jesus was "before" Abraham, that he, Jesus, used the verb "I am" to identify himself in seven important distinctives that tells us about him and his mission.

Deuteronomy 6:4 indeed says it, but not all – God is one. Monotheism. Not two, not three – not any more, not any less. He is one. He is three in one. The monotheistic God revealed his incarnation to us in many ways, and MONO-genes is one of those Greek words that help us see his divinity, as well as his humanity. Very God and very man.

In His name,

Greg Albrecht