by A.S.K. Joommal  

“It should be clearly realized that Jesus did not claim in the Gospels to be the son of God in a physical sense, such as the narratives of virgin birth suggest, nor did he claim to be the son of God in a metaphysical sense, such as was required by the Nicence theology. He claimed to be God’s son in a normal sense, in the sense in which all human beings are sons of God, as standing in a filial and moral relationship to God and capable of acting on those moral principles on which God acts.” 

            The above words may seem to come form a foe of Christianity, an agnostic, perhaps, or any other non-Christian. But these simple, sensible words were spoken by one who was very much a Christian, who was an ordained reverend of the Christian Church, a priest who knew his Christianity better than anyone else. The Rev. H.D.A. Major, Principal of Ripon Hall, Oxford, spoke the above words at a religious conference convened at Oxford in 1921. 

            Dr. Rashdall, Dean of Carlisle, who presided at this conference, further threw a bombshell on the Christian world when he said that his reading of the Bible did not allow him to accept Jesus as God. Jesus, said the learned Dean, was MAN in every sense of the word, and NOT God. 

            The Arians, a sect of the early Christians, who maintained that God and Jesus were not the same, and that Jesus was subordinate to God, lost their amendment at the Council of Nicaea in A.C. 325 - that most decisive event in the history of the Christian Church. Arius, the leader, was an Alexandrian presbyter of the Church, and, after weeks of arguing, the anti-divines first carried the day, and then the pro-divines, when ultimately it was decided by a majority that Jesus was the son of God and the second member of the Trinity. 

            To decide this great question, there assembled at Nicaea 2,048 ignorant and superstitious Christian priests, and also representatives of Paganism. Numerous resolutions were presented to the Roman Emperor, Constantine the Great, who presided, but he burned them all without reading them, “lest the contentions of the priests should become known to anyone”. Out of the puerile assembly grew the Nicene Creed which officially added Jesus to the Pantheon* of Incarnate slain god-men. 

            The Creed received royal assent. A royal command was issued that everyone must believe in it, and that Christianity thus defined was to be the state religion of Rome for the future. The bishops who opposed it were cast out as heretics. Those who had been on the winning side were promoted and given places of authority under the holy name of “orthodox.” Then persecution began, and Christianity entered on its long record of bloodshed which did not end until some 25,000,000 victims had been slaughtered**.

              Thus the imaginative fancies of the doctrine-makers of the Christian Church had run wild when they busied themselves trying to make God out of a mere man, and calling him (i.e. Christ) both the son AND the father in the same breath. The Divinity of the Almighty was assaulted. He was brought down to the level of puny mortals, thus making it easy to crucify him – because it was impossible to crucify a non-mortal God! 

            The greatest incursion on man’s reasoning faculty was perpetrated by the doctrine-makers of Christianity when they asked sane people to believe that Christ was both the son of God AND also God at one and the same time! 

            How can a man be his OWN son and his OWN father at one and the same time? EITHER he is the son OR he is the father. He simply CANNOT   be both the father AND the son rolled up in the same person. Father and son implies TWO distinct and separate persons. If Christ is the son, then surely he cannot be the father (God). And if he is the father (God), then it stands to reason (Not Christian reason!) that he cannot be his own son. 

            Christians use the term “begotten” for Christ. They say that he is God’s “begotten son.” So if he is the “begotten” son, then that makes God the “begetter”, does it not? Thus if God is the “begetter”, how could he then be the “begotten”? How could the “begetter” be “begotten”? Yet Christians believe implicitly that Christ IS God. To them, therefore, the “begotten” IS the “begetter” and vice versa. 

            Christians base their contention that Christ is the son of God, perhaps on the belief that his mother, Mary, was a virgin and she had begotten him without the agency of a father. If this is regarded as a powerful proof of Christ’s “sonship”, then it should apply with greater force to Adam and Eve, both of whom had neither father nor mother! 

            If virgin birth is any argument, then there is a person on record in the Bible who was not only born without parents, but is unique as far as human beings are concerned. This man is MELCHISEDEC. 

“For this Melchisedec …. Which is, KING OF PEACE; WIHTOUT FATHER, WITHOUT MOTHER, without descent, HAVING NEITHER BEGINNING OF DAYS, NOR END OF LIFE; but made like unto the Son of God.”    (Hebrews,  7:13) 

            If any person has a better claim to be called God or “son” of God, then that person is undoubtedly Melchisedec. A slight comparison between Christ and Melchisedec will immediately show who is the rightful claimant to “sonship” or “Godhood”, and who is by far the superior of the two: 

            Christ is often referred to as the PRINCE of Peace. But Melchisedec is the KING of Peace. No person with even a minimum of education would ever deny that a prince is much lower in degree and status than a King. 

            Christ has “beginning”, for we all know that he was born like any other human child. But Melchisedec had NO beginning. Likewise, Christians know that Christ’s days were ended when he was put on the Cross. But Melchisedec has no “end of life”, that is, he is eternal or ever-living. 

            Christ had at least a mother, and through her, a descent. But Melchisedec was “without father, without mother, without descent.” 

            In all fairness to Melchisedec and Christ, therefore, pray, who of the two is greater? Who of the two should be called God or “son” of God? 

            Christians maintain that where Jesus is concerned, the word “BEGOTTEN” is used, and it is this BEGOTTEN-ness of Christ that distinguishes him above everyone else and above all the creations of God Almighty. This, however, is no argument because the word “begotten” is used in the case of David as well, for we read in the Old Testament that: 

“The Lord hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; This day have I BEGOTTEN thee.” (Psalm, 2:7). 

            The claim of Christians that Jesus is the ONLY “begotten” son of God is thus proved false by the Bible itself. It is made abundantly clear by the Scriptures that God has more than one “begotten” son, and that Christ is NOT the only one. 

            It is thus obvious that words have lost their ordinary meaning with Christians and have begotten a new complexion! No person can subscribe to such dogmas and still claim to exercise a hold over his sanity.

            It is undeniable that, according to the Bible, Jesus did call himself the “son” of God. But it is also undeniable that he meant he was God’s son in the same sense as all human beings are His children. Jesus  did not  mean that he was God’s son in the PHYSICAL sense. This filial relationship was decided for Jesus in the Council of Nicaea in the year 325 A.C. when he (Christ) was declared “consubstantial with the Father” – i.e. made of the same substance as the Father.

              It will be shown later, through quotations form the Bible, that the term “Son of God” means any and every human being who cares to call himself as such, and on whom God desires to bestow this appellation. 

            The term “son of God” is used metaphorically in the Bible and means a beloved of God, or a righteous person, or simply a human being whom God has created. 

            Jesus had, perhaps, a suspicion that his relationship with God might be misinterpreted. In order, therefore, to dispel all doubts as to his mortality and human origin, he frequently called himself “Son of Man.” 

            In the four gospels we find the term “Son of Man” mentioned in 80 (eighty) different places: 30 times in Matthew; 14 times in Mark; 24 times in Luke, and 12 times in John. Only twice does Christ refer to himself as the “son of God.” The two passage concerned are as follows. 

1.          “But of that day and that hour knoweth no man; no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the son, but the Father.” (Mark, 13:32) 

2.          “And all things are delivered unto me of my Father; and no man knoweth the son, but the Father, neither knoweth any man the Father, save the son, and he to whomsoever the son will reveal him.”  (Matthew, 11:27) 

            In the first verse Christ acknowledges his ignorance of God’s will. The second verse is a plain statement of fact: Jesus, being a prophet of God, says that no man can come to know the Divine revelation until the prophet himself discloses it to him. 

            The Encyclopaedia Biblica comments upon these two verses, in an article entitled  “Son of God”, as follows: 

“We must infer that Jesus had indeed Communion with God, BUT NOTHING BEYOND IT; but this connection was under such limitations that the attribute of Goodness as well as absolute knowledge belonged to God, and hence the boundary between the Divine and human was STRICTLY PRESERVED.”  

            Christian clergymen are very fond of citing the following passage from Matthew in order to substantiate that Christ was the Son of God: 

“When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I the son of man am? And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist; some, Elias; and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets. He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am? And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, The Son of the living God.” (Matthew, 16:13-16) 

            But Mark who is admittedly the first Gospel-writer, has the following on his record: 

“And Peter answereth and saith unto him, Thou art the Christ. And he (Jesus) charged them that they should tell no man of him.”  (Mark, 8:29-30) 

            Apart from the fact that Simon Peter contradicts himself in this verse in that he stops at the word “Christ” and does not go further by calling him “son of the living God” as in the first verse, two questions arise from a comparison of the above two verses: 

1.          Why did Mark leave out the designation “son of the living God”? Did he not consider it important enough to include it in his record? The “Son of God” doctrine is one of the most important pillars of the Christian Church. Matthew mentioned it. How is it that Mark omitted it completely? 

2.          If Jesus was indeed the son of God in the sense that the Churchmen want us to accept him, then why was he desirous of concealing his identity? How can the “son” of an All-Powerful, Almighty God (who was God himself) be afraid of puny mortals? 

            The answer to the above two questions is as clear as daylight: the words “the son of the living God”, are undeniably a later interpolation. 

            In scriptural usage the term “son of God” is a synonym for “righteous man.” We read in Mark the following: 

“And when the centurion, which stood over against him (Jesus on the cross), saw that he so cried out, and gave up the ghost, he said, Truly this man was the SON OF GOD.” (Mark, 15:39) 

            The same observation is recorded by Luke in the following words: 

“Now when the centurion saw what was done, he glorified God, saying, certainly this was a RIGHTEOUS MAN.”  (Luke, 23:47) 

            It is therefore abundantly clear that the term “son of God” means “a righteous man.”

            We shall now show that the appellation “son of God” has been used throughout the Bible as an expression of esteem and affection and on some occasions of a spiritual nearness of the person referred to as such with God. In the Bible we find that the Israelites, judges and jurists, Christians, orphans, the prophets, in fact all mankind have been called “sons of God.” 

1.   Children of Israel are sons of God: 

     (a)   “And it shall come to pass that in the place where it was said unto them, Ye are not my people, there it shall be said unto them, Ye are the SONS OF THE LIVING GOD.”  (Hosea, 1:10) 

     (b)   “….there they shall be called the CHILDREN OF THE LIVING GOD.”  (Romans, 9:26) 

2.   Judges and Jurists are sons of God: 

 “I have said, we are gods; and all of you are CHILDREN OF THE MOST HIGH.” (Psalm, 82:6) 

3.   All Christians and believers are sons of God: 

“But as many as received him, to them gave he the power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name.”   (John, 1:12) 

4.   All orphans are sons of God: 

“A father of the fatherless and a judge of the widows, is God in His holy habitation.”  (Pslam, 68:5) 

5.   Prophets are sons of God: 

      (a)  “…Adam, which was the SON OF GOD.” (Luke, 3:38) 

      (b)  “And thou shalt say unto Pharaoh, Thus saith the Lord, Israel is my SON, even my FIRST-BORN.”    (Exodus, 4:22) 

      (c)  God says in praise of David:  “He shall cry unto me, Thou art my Father, my God, and the rock of my salvation. And I will make him my FIRST-BORN, higher than the kings of the earth.”  (Psalm 89:26-27) 

     (d)   Speaking of Solomon, God says:  “… and he shall be my SON and I will be his FATHER; and I will establish the throne of his kingdom over Israel for ever.” (1 Chronicles, 22:10) 

6.   All men and women are sons/daughters of God: 

“And I will receive you, And I will be a Father unto you, And ye shall be my SONS and DAUGHTERS, saith the Lord Almighty.” (2 Corinthians,6:18) 

      (b)  “Do ye thus requite the Lord, O foolish people and unwise? Is not He thy FATHER that hath bought thee?”  (Deuteronomy, 32:6) 

            It would not be out of place to mention here that Jesus did not appropriate God to himself alone but openly acknowledged His Universal Fatherhood when he told his flock: “my father and YOUR father”,  “my God and YOUR God.” These words prove further that Christ was NOT God since he referred to a distinctly separate Personality – GOD. If Jesus was God, he would not have said “MY God and YOUR God”! God would never refer to Himself as “MY God.” (See John, 20:17) 

            Christ is also recorded by gospel-writers to have uttered the plaintive, heart-rending cry of “Eli, Eli, Lama Sabachtani?” (My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken me?). Can anyone imagine these most human words coming from an Almighty, All-Powerful God? If Jesus was God, as Christians believe, then this plaintive cry of Christ means that God had deserted HIMSELF! Christ, being God, was calling upon God (i.e. himself) to help him in his trouble. But God turned a deaf ear to His own cries. God was addressing Himself, but decided not to help Himself and was eventually killed by his enemies. Can any situation be more ridiculous?? God made the law to kill for blasphemy, then came in human form, and became a victim of His own law! 

            If the Christian God is so weak, so puny, so destructible, so vulnerable that His created beings were easily able to arrest Him, degrade Him publicly and finally put Him on a cross to suffer an ignominious death, then we are afraid that the THINKING multitude constituting the non-Christian world can have no truck with or confidence in such a God that is capable of being destroyed as easily as a human being! A god that could not save himself, how can he “save” others? 

            If Christians insist on pulling down the Almighty God of the Universe to the weak, mortal level of a human being thus making a mockery of the Divine, sacred, transcendental Nature of the Lord Almighty, they are entitled to their beliefs. But they must not expect those who still have some reason left in them, to sacrifice their sanity at the altar of blind faith and to believe, like them, in a God that was killed by human beings! 

            Reason revolts and one’s whole being shudders at the very thought that an Eternal Being that is far, far removed from the puny reach of any mortal, was made into a human being for want of a better theological concept of God. Common sense is astounded at the very idea that identity was established by Christians between a mere man and an immortal, everlasting God. 

            God is a unique Being. He is the Alpha and the Omega. He is neither a begetter, nor is He begotten. He it is Who created the entire universe – and everything that is in it. He has no favourites – all human beings are His children. 

            It is unthinkable, and it is the greatest blasphemy to say that Jesus Christ was God or God’s “begotten son.” (Christians will never know for certain whether Christ was God or the “son” or God. To console themselves, they say that he was both!) Christians say that Jesus was God’s son in the PHYSICAL sense, and not in a figurative sense. If this be the case, then may we ask where is God’s “Wife”? (God forbid!) If the power of human propagation is attributed to God thus making no distinction between what is human and what is divine, then we are, ipso facto, legitimately entitled to carry matters to their logical confusion and ask what has happened to God’s “Wife”? 

            The doctrine of the “Sonship” of Christ (which was borrowed from pagan sources) is indeed a “crazy, mixed-up” brainchild of the Church Fathers of yore. It is a terribly confusing dogma – indeed no less confusing than the other dogmas. If God, in order to save the world, became man (incarnating Himself in Jesus Christ), then where does the “Sonship” of Christ come into all this? If God became man, then He is a God-man, that is, He is still the Father, but in the guise of a man. So where is the son, then? What was Christ BEFORE God decided to incarnate Himself into him? Was he the Son, or was he the Father? He certainly could not have been the Father, because there must have been a stage and a state when God the Father had not infused (confused?) Himself into the body of Christ. After His infusion into Christ, was Christ still the son, or did he become the Father? Or did he become both? If he became both, that is, if the essence of Father and Son mingled and an identity was attained, then what happened to that third element, the Holy Ghost? Or is the Holy Ghost very much of a disinterested “third” party with no “insurance” whatsoever of infusing himself in the other two – a mere spectator rather than an actual participant in this inexplicable process of fusion into confusion? 

If Christ was God, then he should have known the present, past and future. Every single future world event should have been an open book to him. He could thus have saved the world centuries of wrangling by stating clearly that the way in which he preferred to be worshipped was Methodism, or Roman Catholicism, or Anglicanism, or Presbyterianism, or any one of  the hundreds of Christian sects we find in the world to-day. 

            If Jesus was God, the Creator of the Universe, why did he not tell his followers about the shape and constitution of the Earth and that it is but a speck in immensity? Why did he also not tell something about Medicine, Geology, Astronomy and the other sciences and arts? Why did he himself not write what he wished us to believe, and not leave his words to be tossed about for centuries in a sea of ignorance and superstition, to be the cause of sects and divisions in his Church? Why did he not say anything in favour of education or democracy? 

            Why did he distinctly say that he was NOT God and that there is only ONE God, when all the time (according to Christians) he was one of the three gods? Why did he continually refer to himself as a “a human being” which is what  “Son of Man” means? Why did he not explain that the term “Son of God” meant nothing more in the original Aramaic than “Servant of God”? Why did he never mention the Trinity, if he is one of the three Christian gods? 

WHY? BECAUSE HE WAS A HUMAN BEING AND DID NOT KNOW!

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CHRIST AND GOD

The Archbishop of Uganda, the Rev. Leslie Brown, wrote as follows in his book* 

“Whatever else you believe or do not about Jesus, you cannot escape from the fact that he lived and that he was a man like other men. 

            “The first three Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, were written to show that the man Jesus truly came from God and worked miracles and gave teachings in the power of God. If you read Mark’s Gospel, for example, you will see how he could control the unseen forces they called evil spirits or demons, how he could heal people in body, bring back people from the dead, and control the winds and storms of nature. In John’s Gospel it seems that the writer’s intention is not so much to write a biography or life of Jesus, but to show clearly how Jesus was truly a man and yet how the things he did and said proved that he was also God. 

            “Christians cannot, therefore, write one book about God and another book about Jesus because they believe that JESUS HIMSELF WAS GOD.” 

            In the above quotation the learned Archbishop wants us to accept that Christ was first a man, but that by working some miracles he became God. 

            It is well-known to every Christian that before crucifixion Jesus performed a number of miracles, so that according to the above theory he had become God by then. It is also well-known that in spite of his           miraculous powers, he was taken by the Jews and held captive by them, and eventually hanged on the cross.

            The question is: what prevented him from showing his powers of Godhood to confound his enemies? No hour was more opportune or supreme than that for showing a miracle, but he showed none! 

            We shall now briefly examine the powers of Almighty God as described in the Bible, and compare these powers with those of Christ’s. 

              The Biblical quotations given above prove CONCLUSIVELY that the divinity attributed to Christ is false and mythical. If a discerning, discriminating Christian has the slightest faith in his Bible and a wee bit of respect for sound common sense, he could not help but reject outright this man-made dogma of the “Sonship” and “Godhood” of Christ. The Bible proves this dogma false; one’s reason rebels against the acceptance of such preposterous notion of a physical, filial relationship of a mere human to the Divine Lord Almighty; Christ himself had debunked this absurd idea. 

            Why, then, do the Christians still insist on perpetuating this ridiculous belief? 

            The answer is simple: THERE IS NO ONE AS BLIND AS ONE WHO WILL NOT SEE; NO ONE AS DEAF AS ONE WHO WILL NOT HEAR!

 

TEN QUESTIONS ON THE “SONSHIP” OF CHRIST

1.          If it is possible for God to have a “son”, then why is it not possible for Him to have a grandson also? In this way He will be able to raise generations of he-gods and she-gods.

2.          Why did God create Adam and fill the earth with sins? Could He not easily have raised His own family of he-gods and she-gods to dwell the earth and swell the heaven? 

3.          In His first experiment of creating mankind, God was a failure: “And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. AND IT REPENTED THE LORD THAT HE HAD MADE MAN ON THE EARTH, AND IT GRIEVED HIM AT HIS HEART.”  (Genesis, 6:5-6). So the questions are: 

(a)         Why cannot He be a failure in His second experiment of wiping sin off from the face of the earth by hanging his only begotten son? 

(b)         Since the son departed from this earth and is sitting snugly beside his daddy, has the sin decreased or increased? If the latter is true, then 

(c)         Has not God failed in His second experiment as well? 

4.          According to the Bible: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son …” (John, 3:16) and “Who gave himself a ransom for all.” (1 Timothy, 2:6). Thus God had willed and planned to hang Jesus; so why blame the Jews for deicide (God-killing)? 

5.          If anyone is guilty of hanging Jesus (in the light of Question 4), then it is God Almighty Himself. Therefore, has He not broken the Sixth Commandment – “Thou shalt not kill”? 

6.          “And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, AND THE POWER OF THE HIGHEST SHALL OVERSHADOW THEE: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.” (Luke 1:35). Thus Mary conceived Jesus as a result of her being OVERSHADOWED by the Holy Ghost, in the same way as when a man OVERSHADOWS his wife planting his seed in her womb. In other words, the Holy Ghost had intercourse with Mary. This is also confirmed by Matthew (1:20): “FOR THAT WHICH IS CONCEIVED IN HER IS OF THE HOLY GHOST.” The following questions arise:

(a)         Is not Jesus the physical son of the Holy Ghost and NOT of God? 

(b)         Had not the Holy Ghost committed adultery with another man’s wife (Mary was at that time espoused to Joseph – Luke, 1:27) and thus broken the Seventh Commandment: “Thou shalt not commit adultery”? 

7.          According to Matthew 1:20, Mary conceived through the Holy Ghost. So how was it possible for Mary to give birth to Jesus in FLESH? For “That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” (John, 3:6). Therefore, having been born of the Spirit, it was necessary for Jesus to appear in spirit and NOT in flesh. Moreover, “God is a Spirit.” (John, 4:24).

The Bible describes God as “the heaven, and heaven of heavens cannot contain Him.” (2 Chronicles, 2:6). 

a).         If such be the case, then how was it possible for the womb of Mary to contain God, assuming that Jesus was God? 

b).         Was God childless before the birth of Jesus? 

9.          The title of Mary is “Theotokos”, meaning, “the Mother of God.” The relationship of Jesus, the Son of God, with the Father of God and the Mother of God is his sonship. But what was the relationship between the Father of God and the Mother of God? See diagram below:

 

If Jesus was the “son” of God, so was Adam (Luke, 3:38). What is the difference between Adam and Jesus? Adam had a better right to godhood than Jesus because he (Adam) was born WITHOUT the agency of a woman. As to Jesus, he was born of a woman and, therefore, according to the Scriptures, he cannot be God: “How then can Man be justified with God? Or how can he be clean that is born of a woman?” (Job, 25:4).

 

---

*        Pantheon was a famous temple with a circular dome at Rome, built about 27 B.C., and dedicated to all the gods.

**      “The Rock of Truth” by Arthur Findlay, pp. 65-66.

***   “God as Christians see Him”, pp. 26-27.