Since the term “only begotten” is a Christian term, let me start by saying I was a cultural Christian at best. I say at best because I became an atheist at the tender age of 8. But I was still required to attend our “Religious Instruction” classes in school which, apart from one glorious year when we studied World Religions, taught stories from the Bible.
I actually liked Jesus, and his teachings, but not that he was crucified. I loved Christmas, the hope, the joy, the message of peace. I didn’t understand Easter, why it was a “Good Friday” when Jesus died, although I always enjoyed chocolate eggs and hot cross buns.
Christian theology, such as was explained to me, was not something I could relate to. One point that I really didn’t get was Jesus being the “Only Begotten Son” of God, human but also divine. This use of begotten is unique to Christianity. Now some have argued that it is kind of a mistranslation, because the Greek means “unique” and “one of a kind,” rather than the implied specialness of being “begotten” and not made by God, unlike the rest of us who are God’s creations, created in God’s image. I hope it’s a mistranslation, but somehow the term persists. As far as I know, the Nicene Creed with its “begotten, not made” is still going strong.
In recent times Sun Myung Moon, founder of the Unification Church, used the term “Only Begotten Son” to refer to Jesus. Now, his wife Hak Ja Han, co-founder of the Unification Church, has taken to using the term “Only Begotten Daughter” to describe herself. The logic here being that if there was an Only Begotten Son surely there should have also been an Only Begotten Daughter and they would have married and been the ancestors of humanity. Yes, that makes sense! The problem is that if Jesus is the Son and she is the Daughter, why were they not born at the same time? A 2,000 years age difference is a bit much! Sun Myung Moon also referred to himself as the Only Begotten Son, as the inheritor of Jesus’ messianic mission which involves marrying the Only Begotten Daughter. But, now we have two Only Begotten Sons?
Where does that leave Jesus? According to Christian theology, Jesus was fully human and fully divine, God incarnate in human form, with the Holy Spirit as his father. Stepping away from theology for a moment, Jesus was clearly born from a woman, Mary. We know that her husband, Joseph, was not his biological father, although he accepted him and was considered his legal father. Did he have a father? Well, the scientifically inclined among us tend to believe that he did. Just because his father wasn’t Joseph doesn’t mean there wasn’t another man in Mary’s life.
And when we come to Hak Ja Han, she talks about having both a mother and a father, who were married to each other and she was conceived in the usual way. So “only begotten” in this case doesn’t seem to involve being born of some encounter with the Holy Spirit impregnating her mother to make her God’s Only Begotten Daughter. This use of “begotten” is a bit of a mystery.
Going back to the “only,” I have always wondered why that doesn’t refer to the first human ancestors, Adam and Eve. Were they not a special creation, the first and only human beings created without human parents? As Ye-Jin Moon describes them in the Divine Heart Principle text: “humanity is all brothers/sisters, originating from the first human couple, Adam/Eve, whom Heavenly Parent alone created without human parents.” That seems to me to make them the “only begotten,” the most special of all human beings, the only ones created directly by God. The rest of us are all descendants of this couple, the first truly human beings. How many “onlys” can there be?
I get it why Christianity developed the notion that Jesus was very special. The thinking was that Adam and Eve messed up, were cursed and kicked out of the Garden of Eden, and humanity has been suffering ever since, unable to experience God’s ideal of creation. The suffering part is undeniable, and surely the world we live in today was not God’s intention. The idea was that God would send a “Messiah” to save us. That Messiah would be special, able to reconnect us back to God and our original purpose as human beings.
But Jesus appeared, and died. He died unrecognized, except by a few, and executed like a criminal. How could that have been God’s plan? But Christianity began from that point, with a dead Messiah. Not an easy place to start! A commonsense viewpoint suggests that Jesus wasn’t supposed to die on the cross, that this outcome was not God’s plan. Remember, “Description is not Prescription.”
Going back to the beginning, to the creation, what makes sense is that the “savior” of humankind would be a man and a woman who succeed where Adam and Eve failed. They don’t need to be superman and superwoman, in fact they shouldn’t be. They should be human beings, descended from Adam and Eve as we all are, who are given the immense task and responsibility to recover our understanding of God’s purpose of creation and our responsibility as human beings, and then to live it.
If this man and woman do it right, they become models for all of us to imitate. They show us how to be a true man and a true woman, true siblings to all people, how to be true spouses to each other and true parents to their children, and have loving dominion over all of creation. If this sounds familiar, it’s already written in the first chapter of the first book of the Bible, Genesis 1:28. That was when God had finished creating, and everything was good. Unfortunately, things went downhill soon after that, so today we experience the hell we created instead of the heaven God wanted to co-create with us.
If the Greek translation is not “only begotten” but more accurately is “unique,” it would refer to all of us. Are we human beings not all unique? That’s what makes life so interesting. Each person reflects a unique combination of the attributes that God gave to human beings. Human beings are the highest of God’s creations, created in God’s complete image and thus eligible to be eternal true children of God our Heavenly Parent. We don’t need one special only begotten child. We are all special, all God’s children. How wonderful that is!
All these ideas, and so much more are explicated in detail in the Divine Heart Principle texts by Ye-Jin Moon. Currently, Parts I and II are available to purchase from the Lulu Bookstore; the other two will be published soon. The Divine Heart Principle website https://divineheartprinciple.org/ provides information about the content, the author, as well as feedback from readers.
Jennifer P. Tanabe 