Son of God in the Quran
Gordon Nickel
The Quran takes issue with a number of important Gospel affirmations about Jesus. Among these, the affirmation that the Quran seems to make the strongest efforts to deny is the confession that Jesus is the Son of God.
The denial of the Son of God is also noteworthy because it comes with a historical context. The Dome of the Rock, built on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem in 691 AD, contains an Arabic inscription that some scholars call the earliest written expression of the faith of Islam. This inscription warned the city’s Christian inhabitants against believing that God has a Son. These four warnings also appear in the Quran.
The Quran states, similar to the Dome inscriptions, that Allah “has not begotten and was not begotten” (112.3). It further explains, also like the Dome, that Allah “has not taken a son” and “has no associate in the kingdom, nor has He any (need of) an ally (to protect Him) from disgrace” (17.111). The longest theological passage in the Dome inscriptions shares the wording of 4.171–2, including the statement, “Allah is only one god. Glory to him! (Far be it) that he should have a son!” The fourth passage appears in the Quran at the end of the third of three longer passages on ‘Īsā: “It is not for God to take any son. Glory to Him!” (19.35).
These quranic “Dome” passages introduce the main lines of the denial of Son of God and suggest some reasons for the denial. At its most basic, the Quran denies the perceived confession, “Allah has taken a son (walad)” (2.116; 10.68; 17.111; 18.4; 19.88, 92; 21.26,Raḥmān; cf. 19.35; 23.91; 25.2). The Quran curiously never specifies that it is Christians who are saying this, but the “People of the Book” are sometimes addressed or mentioned in the context of the verses.
The main reasons for the denials are theological: Allah has no need of anything, including a partner (sharīk) or helper (2.116; 4.171; 10.68; 17.111; cf. 112.2). In several verses, belief in a “son” is perceived to threaten Allah’s exclusive sovereignty (2.116; 17.111; 18.4; 21.26). Two verses say it is “not appropriate” for Allah to take a son (19.92, 35). One verse asks, “How can [Allah] have a child,if he has no consort?” (6.101). Another verse seems to claim that a son would be like another god and then suggests that this would result in competition and conflict between them (23.91).
The tone of the denials can be as harsh as any of the Quran’s polemical passages. At 9.30, in response to the perceived confessions of Jews and Christians, the Quran seems to boil over with anger, “Allah fights them! How they are perverted!” But nothing exceeds the apparent depth of feeling in 19.89–91, where “they say: ‘al-Raḥmānhas taken a son.’” This confession is called a disastrous (idd) utterance that almost causes the universe to fall apart.
One Muslim scholar has suggested that the main Islamic objection to the Christian confession is not the phrase “son of God” – that could be understood figuratively, he writes. The actual objection is to the perception that Son of God ascribes deity to Jesus.
Some scholars have written that when the Quran denies awalad(“son” or “child”) of Allah, it has in mind Arab idolaters and not Christians. But the choice of threewaladtexts for the Dome inscriptions does not suggest that they target idolaters. At 9.30 the Quran also denies that the Messiah is the son of Allah using another term for son –ibn Allāh.
One response to the quranic denials might be to say that Christians do not actually believe that God “took” a son, nor do Christians “associate” a mere human with God. Such an approach, however, would miss the depth of revulsion that Muslims have felt against calling Jesus the Son of God throughout history up to the present day.
It is noteworthy that as the Dome inscriptions place ‘Īsā’s status far below the Gospel’s Son of God, the inscriptions raise up another. The wording of 33.56 appears twice, with its high claim that Allah and his angels “pray upon” (or “for,”ṣalla‘alā) the prophet of Islam. The inscriptions claim that Allah has sent “his messenger” with the “religion of truth,” so that he may cause it to “prevail over all religion” (9.33; 48.28; 61.9).
Meanwhile, the New Testament writings are unanimous in reporting that it was God the Father who called Jesus his Son. Peter testifies, “We ourselves heard this voice” (2 Peter 1:18).