Page 192 - Prophet Jesus (Pbuh): A Prophet Not A Son, Of God

190 Prophet Jesus (pbuh): A Prophet, Not A Son, of God

In his work No Other Name , Paul Knitter writes:
In talking about Jesus, the New Testament authors use the language
not of analytic philosophers but of enthusiastic believers, not of sci-
entists but lovers. It is, as Krister Stendahl urges, "religious lan-
guage"—that is, "love language, caressing language." In describing
Jesus as "the only," Christians were not trying to elaborate a meta-
physical principle but a personal relationship and a commitment
that defined what it meant to belong to this community… Christian
dogmatic definitions, in the way they have been understood and
used, have perhaps done just that to the love language of the early
church. The languages of the heart and the head are not necessarily
contradictory, but they are different. And their differences must be
respected.
The many texts that presents Jesus as "the Son of God," even "the
only begotten Son" (John 1:14), will also be heard differently. Their
primary intent will… urge all hearers to take this Jesus seriously, as
authoritative. The point these texts are making… Jesus is a reliable
revelation of God. In translating the Greek, Uios tou Theou ("son of
God"), therefore, we must not insist on the definite article "the"; it
does not appear in the original Greek and the phrase could as well
be translated "a son of God." And the descriptive qualifier "only be-
gotten" could perhaps be better rendered according to the Hebrew
usage as "first-born" or "beloved". It could then be understood not to
affirm the exclusivity but the reliability, the urgency, of Jesus' role as
God's instrument. 71

Behind this persistent defense of belief in the trinity probably lies a
concern that Prophet Jesus' (pbuh) position might be overshadowed.
However, even without belief in the trinity it is still possible to make this
same emphasis. Indeed, the Qur'an reveals the miraculous aspects of
Prophet Jesus (pbuh) and his ascension in detail, as well as the fact that

he and his family have been made superior to the worlds: