Question:

How do Christians usually use the Bible to prove the idea that Jesus is God, and is it possible for us to disprove this idea using the Bible? If you can provide quotes from the Bible, that would be great!

Answer:

Christians do quote various passages, mostly ambiguous, from the Bible to enforce belief in the deity of Jesus. In fact, they base the dogma of Trinity more on the Bible than anything else. To them, to understand the divine nature of God is beyond the human limited perspective and hence we can only know “what He has revealed to us about His nature through the Bible”.

First of all, you must note that logically proving the deity of Jesus from the Bible falls into the fallacy of ‘begging the question’. Begging the question or circle reasoning is a fallacy in which the premises include the claim that the conclusion is true or assume that the conclusion is true. Imagine you go for a job interview and the interviewer asks for a reference. You mention a name and if he asks how he would know if he is trustworthy, you say: Oh I vouch for him!

Christians –quoting from the Bible- claim that Jesus is the only begotten son of God. John in his Gospel says: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son…” [John 3:16]

The above quotation is one of the Biblical sources of Christians’ claim for divinity of Jesus.

Let’s read the Bible and see whether Jesus was the only begotten son of God:

1. David; a begotten son of God:

Psalms of Prophet David (or as Christians refer to him; King David) is one of the books of the Old Testament. Although the Psalms are the product of various authors, Peter and John (Acts 4:25) ascribe the second Psalm to David. In the second Psalm we read: “I will declare the decree: the Lord has said unto me, you my Son; this day have I begotten you.” [Psalms 2:7]

2. Israel; the begotten son of God:

Israel was another name for Prophet Jacob. In the book of Exodus we read: “And you shall say unto Pharaoh, thus said the Lord, Israel is my son, even my firstborn.” [Ex. 4:22]

3. Adam was the son of God:

Luke mentioning the lineage of Jesus says: “Jesus being …the son of Joseph, the son of Heli, …which was the son of Adam, who was the son of God.” [KJV]

As you can see, according to the Bible, Jesus was not the only begotten son of God. The expression of son of God, if I were to justify it, at best would mean the one who is spiritually and passionately close to God and is chosen by Him; the Almighty. In this sense, all the Prophets are the sons of God. Any one who has studied the Bible knows that Jesus in many instances spoke in figures of speech. Then if these quotations about his `sonship` are correct, why couldn’t he have said it as a figure of speech?!

The holy Quran, however, has abandoned the usage of this expression not to leave any room for misinterpretation.

Sheikh Mansour Leghaei