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A false statement in a core belief of Islam
Begetting and Self-sufficiency
This is a self-contradiction due to confusion of terms.
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- 10:68
- They say [the Christians]: "Allah hath begotten a son!"
Glory be to Him! He is self-sufficient!
His are all things in heaven and on earth!
No warrant have ye for this!
(An essentially identical statement is made in Sura 2:116-117.)
This above verse
1) denies that God has a begotten Son, and
2) explains this by saying that God is self-sufficient;
he doesn't need anyone to depend on.
10:68 tells us the reason God wouldn't have a begotten Son is because
God is self-sufficient. We are going to use a rule from formal logic
to make another statement about what this verse tells us. The rule is
that (A implies B) is equivalent to (not B implies not A).
IF: It tells us that:
God does not have a begotten Son, for He is self-sufficient.
THEN, according to the Law of Contrapositives, the Qur'an also tells us:
If God HAS a begotten Son, then God is NOT self-sufficient.
Since "not self-sufficient" means the same as "dependent," the above
can be restated as:
If God HAS a begotten Son, God is dependent.
This reasoning is very Qur'anic, as we find it this implication
clearly spelled out for example in Sura 6:101 (see below).
According to C.S. Lewis, "To beget is to become the father of:
to create is to make. And the difference is this. When you beget,
you beget something of the same kind as yourself. But when you make,
you make something of a different kind from yourself. What God begets
is God; just as what man begets is man. What God creates is not God;
just as what man makes is not man."
So, what God begets is God; so if God had a begotten Son, it would not
mean he would be dependent on some other entity; it would mean that
He would be dependent on Himself. DEPENDENT ON HIMSELF. That is
the very meaning of self-sufficience. So that verse is obviously
self-contradictory and therefore wrong.
The Qur'anic argument receives its force from the reasoning that
in order to "beget" God needs a consort, a wife, and would therefore
be dependent, i.e. longer self-sufficient. For example, we read in
Sura 72:3 "And exalted is the Majesty of our Lord: He has taken
neither a wife nor a son." on which Yusuf Ali comments in note 5730:
"They abjure ... the doctrine of a son begotten by Allah, which would
also imply a wife of whom he was begotten." This is not only the
reasoning of the commentators though, since the Qur'an itself gives
this argument in Sura 6:101 stating:
Wonderful Originator of the heavens and the earth;
how can he have a son when He has no consort?
He created all things,
and He hath full knowledge of all things.
Obviously, the author of the Qur'an cannot answer this question and
and has not the necessary knowledge of all things, since nowhere in
the Bible is a wife mentioned. This begotten Son comes from the Father
only, without any involvement of a third party, and therefore God
was not dependent on anyone. This begetting is a begetting with
full self-sufficiency. The author of the Qur'an might not have
understood this, but the Qur'anic logic is wrong if it is supposed
to be a response to the Biblical revelation.
This topic obviously begs the question what "begetting" means in
regard to God, and how there can be still only one God in the
"bringing forth" of the Son from the Father. (Note: I did not
say "after" but "in" since this is a reality from eternity and
not subject to our time frame. The Son was God from all eternity.
And this "begetting" is without the involvement of a wife or any
sexual act.)
Some of these topics can be explored in the sections on the
identity of Jesus and the doctrine of
Trinity. An article on the terminology
of "begotten" will be forthcoming.
Contradictions in the Qur'an
Answering Islam Home Page