God the Only-Begotten
The following excerpt is taken from the monumental work titled The Incarnate Christ and His Critics: A Biblical Defense, authored by Robert M. Bowman Jr. & J. Ed Komoszewski, published by Kregel Academic, Grand Rapids, MI, 2024, Part 3: The Name of Jesus: Jesus’ Divine Names, Chapter 23: Jesus as “God” in John’s Writings, pp. 427-431.
In my estimation this is THE best and most comprehensive exposition and defense of the biblical basis for the Deity of Christ. Every serious Trinitarian Christian student of the Holy Bible, apologist, and/or theologian must have this book in the library.
John 1:1 is not an isolated or anomalous instance of John apparently referring to Christ as God. In three other places in his writings—two in the Gospel (John 1:18; 20:28) and one in his first epistle (1 John 5:20)— John uses the title “God” for Jesus in ways that add considerably to our understanding of the paradoxical statement of John 1:1.
GOD THE ONLY SON (JOHN 1:18)
John’s prologue ends with another seemingly paradoxical statement: “No one has ever seen God [theon]. The only Son, God [theos], who is at the Father’s side, has revealed him” (John 1:18 NABRE). The first occurrence of “God” (theon) refers to the Father, while the second (theos) refers to the Son. There are both textual and translational difficulties regarding this statement that we must consider.
The Textual Question: “Son” or “God”?
First, the Greek manuscripts do not all read the same way here and we must determine what is most likely to be what was originally stated here in the Gospel of John. The overwhelming majority of Greek manuscripts say ho monogenēs huios (traditionally translated “the only begotten Son”). This manuscript support for the traditional text includes one notable early Greek manuscript, the fifth-century Codex Alexandrinus. The rest of the Greek manuscripts with this wording date from the ninth century and later. However, some early translations in Latin and Syriac also reflect this wording.
On the other hand, there is significant early manuscript support for the reading monogenēs theos (which we shall argue means “the only Son, God,” as quoted above). For all practical purposes, this is the only other viable variant. The biblical manuscripts with this reading include the two fourth-century codices Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, a couple of additional codices from the fifth and eighth centuries, early translations into Coptic and Syriac, and two papyri dated to around the beginning or early part of the third century, P66 and P75. Contrary to what is often said by those favoring ho monogenēs huios here, some of this manuscript evidence (e.g., the Coptic) comes from outside the textual tradition, category, or family of manuscripts represented by Sinaiticus and Vaticanus (usually called the “Alexandrian” type). In other words, the manuscript evidence for monogenēs theos is not only early, it is also diverse.1
In the judgment of most leading textual critics, the discovery of P66 and P75 helped confirm that the reading monogenēs theos, already well supported in the earliest codices, was most likely to be original.2 The other reason for this conclusion is that it is much easier to explain all the variants if the text originally used theos. It is easy to understand why scribes would change the wording monogenēs theos, which does not occur anywhere else in the Bible and which many interpreters have found puzzling, to monogenēs huios, which simply repeats the description of Christ so familiar to everyone especially from John 3:16 (also John 3:18; 1 John 4:9). By contrast, it is very difficult to understand why scribes would change the familiar and easily understood huios to theos. These considerations led the editors of the Greek New Testament critical texts produced by both the United Bible Societies (currently NA28/UBS5) and the Society of Biblical Literature (SBLGNT) to accept the wording with theos. 3
Not everyone is convinced. A few contemporary English versions accept “Son” instead of “God” in John 1:18 (NEB/REB, NJB, NKJV). The traditional reading with huios, long accepted in most editions of the Greek New Testament until the twentieth century, has most recently been included in Tyndale House’s edition. Bart Ehrman, the most prominent living scholar in New Testament textual criticism, argues in favor of “Son” here.4 Ehrman’s explanation for why huios was changed to theos in John 1:18, however, exposes the weakness of this position. He argues that scribes created the variant to counter the adoptionist claim that Christ was not God but just a human being.5 Yet if anti-adoptionist scribes had wanted to alter John’s text to support the deity of Christ, one would expect them to have used a wording familiar from other parts of the New Testament, rather than introducing a variant with an absolutely unprecedented wording.6
The Translational Question: “Only Begotten,” “Unique,” or “Only Son”?
Ehrman’s main objection to the reading with theos is that monogenēs meant simply “unique,” so that calling Christ the monogenēs theos here would result in his being called the “unique God,” which in context would seem to exclude God the Father from being God.7 That is, it would be odd for John to have written, “No one has ever seen God [the Father]; the unique God . . . has made him known,” because such a statement appears self-contradictory. Ehrman has a point. Only one well-known English version renders the text in this way (“the only God,” ESV), and that wording can be taken in the contradictory way Ehrman notes. Still, if the evidence shows that to be what John wrote, we should accept it and try to understand what he meant by it.
An alternative is to use the traditional translation “only begotten” for monogenēs, so that Christ would here be called “the only begotten God.” This was the rendering in all of the twentieth-century editions of the NASB. Similarly, with one important difference, the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ NWT renders the expression “the only-begotten god.” In English, at least, such a translation appears to mean that Christ was a second “God” or “god,” which as we have explained is not a plausible interpretation of John’s Christology.
What the two translations “the only/unique God” and “the only begotten God” have in common is that they treat monogenēs (“unique,” “only begotten”) simply as an adjective modifying the noun theos (“God”). Like most adjectives, though, monogenēs could be used “substantivally,” that is, functionally as a noun, as John in fact has just used it a few lines earlier: “glory as of the only Son [monogenous] from the Father” (John 1:14). Might it also be used substantivally in verse 18?
Elsewhere in biblical occurrences (including the Apocrypha), monogenēs functions adjectivally only when qualifying the nouns huios (“son,” Luke 7:12; John 3:16, 18; 1 John 4:9) or thygatēr (“daughter,” Tob. 6:11; Luke 8:42). Otherwise, monogenēs functions substantivally (Judg. 11:34; Tob. 3:15; 8:17; Pss. 21:21 LXX [22:20]; 24:16 LXX [25:16]; 34:17 LXX [35:17]; Wis. 7:22; Luke 9:38; John 1:14; Heb. 11:17), usually in context referring to an only or unique child (the exceptions are Pss. 22:20; 35:17; Wis. 7:22). Usage elsewhere in biblical texts, then, strongly suggests that in John 1:18 monogenēs is being used substantivally, not adjectivally as a modifier of theos. This substantival usage results in the two words standing in what grammarians call apposition to one another. Familiar examples of apposition in the New Testament include “Paul, an apostle” (2 Cor. 1:1; Gal. 1:1; etc.) and “Christ, the Lord” (Luke 2:11).
Ehrman objects to a substantival reading of monogenēs in John 1:18, denying that Greek ever uses an adjective substantivally when it is followed immediately by a noun that agrees with it grammatically.8 Daniel B. Wallace cites various texts as counterexamples,9 most notably “an eighth, Noah” (ogdoon Nōe, 2 Peter 2:5), and “Jews, devout men” (Ioudaioi andres eulabeis, Acts 2:5). Alexander Smarius, who also objects to a substantival view of monogenēs in John 1:18 though he favors “the only-begotten god” (NWT), does not discuss these examples.10
Given the common usage of monogenēs as a substantive and the fact that it was just used that way in John 1:14, we are on solid ground in concluding that it is used that way again in 1:18. This leaves the question of how we should translate monogenēs there. A few English versions render it with words like “one” or “unique” and with no indication of sonship (e.g., “the only one, himself God,” NET, similarly ESV mg.; “the unique One, who is himself God,” NLT; “the one and only, God,” LEB). Since these translations rightly understand monogenēs as standing in apposition to theos, they do not result in the apparently contradictory reference to Christ as “the only God.”
On the other hand, since John 1:14 used the term to describe Christ’s coming “from the Father,” and since 1:18 refers immediately to Christ being “in the bosom of the Father” (NKJV, LEB), the concept of sonship is almost certainly implicit in the use of monogenēs in both places. Based on this reasoning, most recent English versions render monogenēs here as “only Son” or the like (as even the ESV does in 1:14), and places it in apposition to “God,” as in the translation “the only Son, God” (NABRE, cf. CEV, CSB, GNT, NIV, NRSV) or “God the only Son” (CEB, NASB [2020]).
The Significance of John 1:18
The fact that Christ is called theos in John 1:18 is significant for our understanding of John 1:1 and therefore of the message of the prologue (John 1:1–18) as a whole. There are clear parallels between the two verses including, of course, the references to Christ at the beginning and end of the passage as “God” (theos). In both verses, alongside references to Christ as God, the Father is also called “God” (theon). It is interesting to note that both theon and theos in verse 18 occur without the article,11 a fact that Smarius admits that from his perspective “is difficult to explain.”12 In verse 1, ton theon (with the article) refers to the Father and theos refers to the Son (called the Word). If it were true that John used the article with theon but not with theos in verse 1 in order to indicate that the Son was a lesser type of deity than the Father, it is very strange that he did not maintain this same distinction in verse 18.
Whereas the prologue begins with the affirmation that “the Word was with God” (John 1:1b), it ends with the affirmation that “God the only Son” is “at the Father’s side” (CEB), “in the bosom of the Father” (1:18b, lit. trans.). The latter statement confirms that John 1:1b refers to personal relationship and closeness between the Word and God the Father, adding yet more evidence supporting the personal preexistence of Christ as the Word.
The affirmation that the “only Son” is himself “God” is a fitting conclusion to the prologue to the Gospel of John. It makes it clear that the one who was God before creation (1:1) was still God when he came to make God the Father known to us through the incarnation. Murray Harris has observed, “Inasmuch as the only Son is God by nature and intimately acquainted with the Father by experience, he is uniquely qualified to reveal the nature and character of God.”13
1. This is a somewhat simplified explanation that is sufficient for our purposes here. On the early and diverse manuscripts supporting monogenēs theos, see Brian J. Wright, “Jesus as ΘΕΟΣ: A Textual Examination,” in Revisiting the Corruption of the New Testament, ed. Wallace, 243–45.
2. Notably Metzger, Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 169; Comfort, New Testament Text and Translation Commentary, 255. Ehrman, Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, 92, disagrees that these two papyri made any significant difference, and surprisingly Wright, “Jesus as ΘΕΟΣ,” 243, concedes the point (without even mentioning Metzger, for example).
3. See Metzger, Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 169–70 (which notes one dissent from its five-member committee, Allen Wikgren). See also Harris, Jesus as God, 74–83; Daniel B. Wallace, “The Gospel According to Bart: A Review Article of Misquoting Jesus by Bart Ehrman,” JETS 49, no. 2 (2006): 344–46; Wright, “Jesus as ΘΕΟΣ: A Textual Examination,” 241–49.
4. Ehrman, Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, 92–96; more briefly, Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus, 161–62.
5. Ehrman, Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, 96.
6. Similarly Wright, “Jesus as ΘΕΟΣ: A Textual Examination,” 248.
7. Ehrman, Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, 94.
8. Ehrman, Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, 95.
9. Wallace, “Gospel According to Bart,” 345; see also Komoszewski, Sawyer, and Wallace, Reinventing Jesus, 240–43 n. 24.
10. Smarius, “Another God in the Gospel of John?,” 159 and n. 69.
11. In most of the manuscripts with the expression monogenēs theos it is anarthrous, although there is some support for the article (P75). See Harris, Jesus as God, 77–78.
12. Smarius, “Another God in the Gospel of John?,” 157 n. 58.
13. Harris, Jesus as God, 102.
Further Reading
A Text Critic’s Comments on John 1:3-4 & 18
The Meaning of Monogenes: Is Jesus God’s “Only Begotten” Son?
John 1:18 – What Does Μονογενὴς Mean?
ONE AND ONLY OR ONLY BEGOTTEN?
Let’s Go Back to ‘Only Begotten’
The Only Begotten Son: A Defense of the King James’ Rendering of John 1:18