The Son of God Came Into Existence at His Begetting in Mary's Womb

PRE-HUMAN EXISTENCE CONTRADICTS LUKE

 Luke makes it very clear that “the Son of God” was brought into existence in Mary’s womb when Gabriel told her:

 “…for that reason (Gk dio kai) [the creative miracle in Mary] what is born (aorist of gennao = “brought into existence”) will be called holy, God’s Son” (Luke 1:35).

The Greek dio kai means “precisely for that reason.”’ It does not mean ‘for that reason also’ as mistakenly entered in the NWT and KJV. Protestant theologian Wolfhart Pannenburg states that:

In Luke the divine Sonship is established by the almighty activity of the divine Spirit upon Mary (Luke 1:35)… Jesus’ divine Sonship is explicitly established by his miraculous birth…Jesus’ virgin birth stands in an irreconcilable contradiction to the christology of the incarnation of a pre- existent Son of God.   Jesus God and Man (pp. 120, 143).

In volume 1, (p. 105) of his History of Dogma Professor Adolf Harnack also notes that: “The miraculous genesis of Christ in the virgin and a real pre-existence of Christ are of course mutually exclusive.” 

THE EXISTENCE OF THE SON OF GOD WAS CAUSED BY HOLY SPIRIT

Holy spirit at Jesus’ conception was the cause of his becoming God’s Son. Therefore Jesus was never God’s Son at any time prior to his birth. Because Jesus came into existence as the Son of God when he was conceived in Mary’s womb he could not have already been in existence as the Son of God! As Gabriel states:

“This one will be great and will be called Son of the Most High” (Luke 1:32). 

Matthew 5:9 and Luke 6:35 demonstrate that “will be called sons of God” means exactly the same as “will be sons of the Most High.” In Luke 6:35 Christians “will be sons of the Most High” and yet they did not pre-exist. Furthermore, this one was going to be great. This means that if he had pre- existed his birth he certainly would not have been great. That goes completely against the idea of him having previously been an archangel or “a god.”

PRE-HUMAN EXISTENCE CONTRADICTS MATTHEW

1.  The Kingdom Interlinear Translation (KIT), under its Greek text of Matthew chapter one, makes it clear that Jesus' very beginning or origin was when he was begotten by God in Mary's womb.  This is right at that beginning of Matthew's description:

“The book of the history (“origin” in KIT. Gk geneseoos from genesis) of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham” (Matt. 1:1).

"...the birth ("origin" in KIT. Gk. geneseoos) of Jesus Christ was...Mary...was found to be pregnant by holy spirit" (Matt. 1:18)

In his detailed birth narrative Matthew uses the word genesis in 1:1 and 1:18. In Bauer’s Greek- English Lexicon genesis is defined as: “One’s coming into being at a specific moment, birth."  Also "state of being - existence" and "of ancestry as point of origin."

However, one’s actual origin — one’s genesis — implies the event of one’s coming into existence and so refers to the time of one’s conception in the womb and not to the event of one’s birth. According to all Greek-English lexicons the usual Greek word for “birth” is gennesis and not genesis, although this can also mean “birth.” However, “birth” is not the right meaning in the context of Matthew 1:18 because the next thing stated in verse 18 of Matthew’s account is that “Mary…was found to be pregnant by holy spirit.” So the word genesis, as used in 1:18, does not concern Jesus’ birth but his begetting i.e. his point of coming into existence — his beginning. So because the Greek of Matthew 1:18 has the word genesis and not gennesis it should never have been translated as “…the birth of Jesus Christ was ...” but as: “The origin of Jesus Christ was…” or “The beginning of Jesus Christ was…” Also Matthew 1:1 is best translated as “The book of the origin” of Jesus Christ…” or “The book of the beginning of Jesus Christ…” This shows that Jesus ‘originated’ in a line from Abraham, and so Darby’s translation reads: “Book of the generation of Jesus Christ.” In fact, Associate Professor of Religious Studies Dr. Bart Ehrman states that: “the earliest and best manuscripts agree in introducing the passage with the words: ‘The beginning of Jesus Christ happened this way.’ The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, p. 75.

Also Dr Hagner in the Word Biblical Commentary understands that Matthew 1:18: “Picks up the genesoos, ‘origin’ of 1:1 and suggests that the Biblos genesoos, ‘record of origin,’ now reaches its goal.” So although Matthew 1:1 involves Jesus’ ancestry — his origin because of his line of descent from Abraham through David, yet logically it “reaches its goal” when Jesus comes into actual existence at the end of that line i.e. his begetting as stated in verse 20.

2.  Furthermore, the Kingdom Interlinear Translation makes it clear that Jesus - the Son of God by his begetting by holy spirit in Mary's womb according to Luke 1:35 - did not come into existence until he was 'fathered,' 'generated,' or 'begotten' by God in Mary.

 “… for that which has been begotten (“generated” in KIT. Gk gennethen from gennao) in her is by holy spirit” (Matt. 1:20). 

This Greek word egennesen (from gennao) meaning “fathered,” “was begotten,” “generated,” or “brought into existence” is used for the more than 40 individuals in Matthew’s genealogical list of Jesus’ ancestors who were ‘fathered’ i.e. brought into existence at conception. The rather dated word “begat,” as used in the KJV etc., gives the accurate meaning of gennethen but the New Jerusalem Bible expresses it accurately in modern terms as, for instance: “Abraham fathered Isaac.” Yet none of these 40 individuals had a pre-human existence. So also with reference to Jesus, the word gennethen does not allow for any pre-human existence for him i.e. he did not exist as a person prior to his begetting in Mary’s womb. Matthew’s account in chapter one alone demonstrates that Jesus was not in existence at any time prior to his begetting by holy spirit.

Therefore, at no time do the Matthew or Luke accounts indicate that Jesus was only coming into existence as a human, as though he was first alive and then merely passed through Mary rather than originating in her as Matthew 1:20 states. If these two accounts given by Luke and Matthew under inspiration are taken seriously, they negate all attempts to give Jesus an origin before his conception, which is why Matthew and Luke appear first in the Christian Greek Scriptures. They state that God ‘fathered’ or “brought Jesus into existence’ by miracle at that time and therefore that must, in all logic, be when Jesus became the Son of God as is stated by Luke. In fact, a person is what he is according to his origin and does not change from one species to another — not from angel or any spirit creature to human.  

By By Raymond C. Faircloth

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