Bridge of Reason

The Watch Tower teaches: ‘The Bible often calls Jesus “the Son of God.” (John 1:49) The expression “Son of God” acknowledges that God is the Creator, or Source, of all life, including that of Jesus. (Psalm 36:9; Revelation 4:11) The Bible does not teach that God literally fathered a child in the same way that humans produce children. ‘ The Bible also calls the angels “sons of the true God.” (Job 1:6) And the Bible says that the first human, Adam, was a “son of God.” (Luke 3:38) However, because Jesus was God’s first creation and the only one created directly by him, the Bible describes Jesus as the foremost Son of God.’ Monogenes The implication clearly is there is nothing so special about Jesus, except his being the ‘foremost Son of God.’ Note they avoid John 3:16, which creates real problems for them since it contains the Greek monogenes to describe Jesus’ relationship with the Father. On Facebook Bavesh Roger weighed in: ‘Much of this depends on the understanding of monogenes. Dr. ...

In the last Watchtower Wednesday we looked at the Watchtower explanation of John 3:16 and what it means for Jesus to be God’s ‘Only begotten Son.’ On jw.org they go into some detail to explain the Greek monogen ē s : ‘The Greek word mo·no·ge·nesʹ is defined by lexicographers as “single of its kind, only,” or “the only member of a kin or kind.” (Thayer’s Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, 1889, p. 417; Liddell and Scott’s Greek-English Lexicon, Oxford, 1968, p. 1144) The term is used in describing the relation of both sons and daughters to their parents.’ They then go on to talk about the ‘only begotten’ son of the widow of Nain (Lk.7:11,12), of Jairus having an ‘only begotten’ daughter (Lk.8:41,42), and the man with an ‘only begotten’ son with an unclean spirit (Lk.9:38). This is designed to make ‘only begotten’ so pedestrian as to be hardly worth mentioning. Thus Jesus, likewise, is the ‘only begotten son from the father’ (Jn.1:14). When you see cults leaning heavily on...