God & Jesus

Why the Qur’an rejects “son of God”

The Qur’an honours Jesus with many titles: Messiah, word of God, messenger and prophet. But it firmly refuses one title that Christians hold dear: son of God. Why?

1The question

Why does the Qur’an refuse to call Jesus the son of God?

2What Christians believe

Christians say that they do not believe God had a physical son, or a wife. The creeds speak of the Son as “begotten, not made”, describing an eternal relationship within the one God, not a birth in time.

Some Christians therefore argue that the Qur’an rejects an idea Christians do not hold. Others note that the Qur’an also rejects the Trinity directly, so the disagreement is real, not only a misunderstanding.

3What the texts say

Sonship by faith

But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name:
John 1:12 · KJVRead in context →
For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.
Galatians 3:26 · KJVRead in context →

The Son in John and Mark

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
John 3:16 · KJVRead in context →
The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God;
Mark 1:1 · KJVRead in context →

4What scholars say

Sidney H. Griffith (The Bible in Arabic, 2013) studies how Christians and Muslims in the early Islamic centuries argued over titles such as “son of God” and “word of God”. John of Damascus, an eighth-century Christian writer, was among the first to respond to Islam’s teaching about Jesus.

Mona Siddiqui (Christians, Muslims, and Jesus, 2013) shows how the title became one of the deepest points of difference between the two faiths.

Scholars agree that the Qur’an aims its denial at the claim that God has offspring of any kind, and that both Christians and Muslims reject the idea of God physically fathering a child.

5The Islamic perspective

The Qur’an answers the title on several levels. It is not fitting for God to take a son; one who has created everything needs no offspring; and the claim follows an older pattern of giving God children. Its shortest chapter sums it up:

It befitteth not (the Majesty of) Allah that He should take unto Himself a son. Glory be to Him! When He decreeth a thing, He saith unto it only: Be! and it is.
Qur’an 19:35 · PickthallRead in context →
The Originator of the heavens and the earth! How can He have a child, when there is for Him no consort, when He created all things and is Aware of all things?
Qur’an 6:101 · PickthallRead in context →
And the Jews say: Ezra is the son of Allah, and the Christians say: The Messiah is the son of Allah. That is their saying with their mouths. They imitate the saying of those who disbelieved of old. Allah (Himself) fighteth against them. How perverse are they!
Qur’an 9:30 · PickthallRead in context →
Say: He is Allah, the One! Allah, the eternally Besought of all! He begetteth not nor was begotten. And there is none comparable unto Him.
Qur’an 112:1–4 · PickthallRead in context →

The Qur’an does not lower Jesus. It calls him the Messiah, a word from God and a spirit from him (4:171). What it refuses is anything that places a second being beside God. For Muslims, honouring Jesus means honouring him as he honoured God: as God’s servant.

6Objections and responses

“The Qur’an thinks Christians believe God had a wife (6:101).”

Response: Qur’an 6:101 is an argument, not a description of the creeds: a child implies a partner, and God has none. The Qur’an also rejects sonship in every other sense that sets someone beside God, including adoption, when it says God does not “take unto Himself a son” (19:35).

“‘Son’ is a word of relationship. Why reject a word the Bible uses so often?”

Response: In the Bible the word describes servants close to God. By the seventh century it had come to mean “God the Son”, a second divine person. The Qur’an refuses the title to protect God’s oneness, while giving Jesus every honour that belongs to a prophet.

7Conclusion

Both sides agree that God did not father a child in a physical way. Christians hold that Jesus is the eternal Son within the one God. Muslims hold that God has no son of any kind, and honour Jesus as the Messiah and messenger of God.

Read Qur’an 19:16–36, which tells the birth of Jesus and ends with the denial of a son, and then Luke 1:26–38.

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