Christmas & God’s Son Part I

The infancy narrative of Matthew is like a concert overture of the Gospel, unfolding the theme that the birth of Jesus the Messiah in Bethlehem under the shadow of the court of a deranged king in Jerusalem is the fulfillment of all the scriptures. The infancy narrative of Luke opens the Gospel with an opera in which the mother of the Forerunner and the mother of the Messiah sing arias and a pastorale about shepherds in a field seeing the light of heaven that reveals the birth of the Savior. By his prologue, John composes a grand symphony of the theological meaning of the Gospel. 

Recordings of favorite movements in a symphony are not unusual, and there are some “greatest hits” in the prologue to the Gospel of John. They are John 1:1, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” and John 1:14, “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.” 

John 1:18, the coda of this symphony, is a fitting conclusion to John’s exposition of the thick theological meaning of the Gospel.

Textual variations of John 1:18

The textual variation in the codices and manuscripts of John 1:18 are intriguing. The majority of textual critics prefer the Greek texts which may be translated as in the New Revised Standard Version:  “It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.” 

The phrase “God the only Son” in the NRSV is a translation of monogenes theos. According to the lexicon BDAG, this should be rendered literally as “an only-begotten one, God” or “a God begotten of the Only-One.” Other modern literal translations of monogenes theos include “the only begotten God” (New American Standard Bible) and “God the One and Only” (New International Version). 

Since monogenes is descriptor of the Son of God in the Gospel according to John and the First Epistle of John–the Son of God who is the Word that “was with God” and who “was God” (John 1:1)–and since “an only begotten one, God” clearly refers to the Son of God since he is the one “who is close to the Father’s heart,” the NRSV translation of the Greek as “God the only Son” makes sense although it is also an interpretation of the text.

Textual variations that also have a good claim to be original do not include “God” (theos) but have “Son” (huios) as the subject modified by monogenes. The New Jerusalem Bible translation is based upon the alternative Greek texts:  “No one has ever seen God; it is the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.” 

When the NRSV includes the name “Son” in its translation, a name that does not appear in the Greek in the preferred Greek texts, the NRSV is rightly interpreting the sense of monogenes theos, “an only-begotten one, God,” as referring to the Son of God since the Son is God who is eternally born of God the Father. In effect, the NRSV translation yields a combination of the meaning of the two main textual traditions. 

Clearly, both textual traditions of John 1:18 manifest how Christian communities received the coda of John’s symphony as ending with a triumphant finale about God’s Son whether a text identifies him explicitly as the Son or as God who is eternally born of God the Father.

The Two Nativities of the Son of God

Throughout Christian history monogenes as a descriptor of huios has been understood as meaning the “only begotten” Son (John 3:16 KJV), the “only” Son (John 3:16 NRSV), and the “one and only” Son (John 3:16 NIV). 

Today translators often neglect to render monogenes as “only-begotten.” Perhaps they think that modern people are not familiar with the word “begotten” or that some might presume that the Johannine literature portrays a mythology of the birth of gods. However, “only-begotten” is the most literal translation of monogenes. Monogenes is a compound word consisting of a word for “only”–that is, that which is one and only–and a word from the word-group that pertains to “beginning” and “birth.” Of course, Johannine writings do not propagate mythology, but they employ the analogy of creaturely beginning and birth to point toward the ineffable divine truth of the eternal generation of the Son from the Father. Likewise, spiration or “breathing” points toward the ineffable eternal procession of the Spirit from the Father. Altogether these analogies express the truth that the nature of God is relational and tri-hypostatic. While God’s nature is beyond human comprehension, because of revelation disclosed to human thought and language we are able to conceptualize something of God’s nature and to speak of it by benefit of analogies with creaturely existence. Accordingly, it is important to translate monogenes in the Nicene Creed as meaning “only-begotten” since the creed expresses the church’s doctrine of the Trinity.

The church fathers often speak of the “two nativities” of Jesus Christ. As the incarnation of the Word of God, his first nativity is his eternal birth of God the Father, and his second nativity is his birth in Bethlehem because the Word has assumed human flesh from the moment of conception by the Virgin Mary.

(Read Part II here.)

Timothy W. Whitaker is a Retired United Methodist Church bishop who served the Florida Area.