“Only Begotten God”? 9 Ways to Translate John 1:18

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John 1:18 is one of the few verses in the New Testament which contains both (1) an all-important theological statement about Christ and (2) a puzzling Greek textual problem. In addition, (3) the Greek wording adopted by most modern version is difficult to translate.

One theologically significant verse, three separate challenges for the Bible interpreter.

Surveying the exegetical landscape in Logos

If I were to study this verse in Logos, I might start with the Text Comparison tool. I have mine loaded up with twenty-five biblical texts, including translations and Greek New Testaments.

I’m going to highlight what I think you would notice if you were to use this tool. Below I’ve marked the relevant phrase in each text. The eight texts that rely on the same Greek wording (μονογενὴς υἱός) are boxed in orange. The rest rely on the other Greek wording (μονογενὴς θεός).

18. An orange box surrounds those versions that follow the μονογενὴς υἱός reading.

Try the Text Comparison tool for yourself. Explore variations of the text and translation of John 1:18.

The sheer profusion of options—all chosen by intelligent Christians dedicated to the study of Scripture—is an indication of the difficulty here.

In the original Greek, there are two options. Once these two are translated into English, I count at least nine significant possibilities:

“The only God”
“The only begotten God”
“The only Son”
“The only begotten Son”
“God’s only Son”
“God the only Son”
“The one and only Son”
“The one and only Son, who is himself God”
“The only one, himself God”

What can we make of this?

Interpretive presuppositions and methodology

I want, in a way, to skip to the end and tell you what I think you should expect when you see the translations all over the map like this. Simply put, you should not expect to solve this set of interpretation problems once for all. If you do, you will have no way of knowing with certainty that you did, and you will have no way of demonstrating to other Christians that your solution is the right one. God in his providence has given us a set of difficulties in John 1:18 that interpreters must interpret, preachers must preach, and translators must translate—but he hasn’t given us footnotes or a commentary providing us authoritative guidance.

The closest we have is what some call the rule of faith, the core teaching of all of Scripture. Indeed, at this point, many people in my experience reach for theology to solve given interpretive difficulties. And this is not wrong. I believe in the divine inspiration of the Bible, and I therefore expect by faith that the messages of the various scriptural writers will cohere and agree. The Spirit is their author, after all (2 Pet 1:20–21).

But if we let theology smooth over every interpretive difficulty, we erase anything unique the Spirit wishes to say to us. We’ve got to perform a close reading and use all the literary and interpretive tools we have at our disposal before we gain the right to an opinion on the meaning of this text.

I don’t think theology solves the problems presented by John 1:18 because every major interpretive or translational option can be—and has been—read through the lens of an orthodox Christology. Put another way, effectively all the biblical scholars who produced the readings in the Logos Text Comparison tool above share the same (Nicene) view of Christ as fully divine and fully human, and they obviously view their translational choices as consistent with that view.

I think it’s safe to assume that you will do the same—so some of the pressure is off here. It is certainly not true that we have an Arian reading vs. an orthodox one, or a theologically accurate translation vs. a theologically aberrant one. Bring your faith self-consciously to your reading, but do your best to let your reading educate your faith.

Bring your faith self-consciously to your reading, but do your best to let your reading educate your faith.

The textual history of the verse

I don’t believe there is a “proper” order for exegesis. The reading of texts is a very human activity, an art. Also, no matter where you start, you’ve already started. You do not and cannot come to any text as a blank slate. You will have ideas about Christ, about Scripture, and even about reading before you ever hear of John 1:18.

Nonetheless, there is something of a logical or temporal order I loosely follow when engaged in the “science” aspects of exegesis, and that order starts with establishing the text upon which my interpretation will be based. This is called “textual criticism.”

I regularly turn to the Logos Exegetical Guide to give me quick links to my text-critical resources, such as the standard A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament by Bruce Metzger. This guide also links me to critical apparatuses, ancient manuscripts, online manuscripts, and other resources.

Use Logos’s Exegetical Guide to get relevant exegetical resources on John 1:18 in seconds.

If you are more advanced in your knowledge of New Testament textual criticism, you hardly need my input here—John 1:18 is a known question in the field.¹ If you’re more of a beginner, you may find help from the Lexham Textual Notes on the Bible, which says this:

Several early manuscripts, including two very early papyrus manuscripts, have “the one and only, God,” which may also be translated as “the only begotten God.” Other early manuscripts and related later witnesses have “the only begotten Son.” The difference is in referent, God or Son. Many textual critics (Metzger, Comfort, Omanson) consider “only begotten Son” as assimilation with similar language elsewhere in John (e.g., John 3:16, 18).²

This is the main issue presented by the textual history of the verse: Some very early handwritten copies of the Greek New Testament say μονογενὴς θεός (“the only begotten God”; or “the one and only God”—we’ll get to that translation difficulty later); other early and late copies say μονογενὴς υἱός (“the only begotten Son”).

This is our puzzling textual problem. Today’s Bible scholars tend to want to go with very early readings when they can—but what in the world is an “only begotten God“?

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Choose your own adventure

This brings us to translation. And here you may choose your own adventure.

Option 1: the only begotten Son

The majority—technically, the Majority—of Greek New Testament manuscripts read “the only begotten Son” at John 1:18. The Textus Receptus tradition of Greek New Testament editions reads this way because it tracks fairly closely (though not exclusively) with the Majority. Translations based on the Textus Receptus therefore say, “the only begotten Son.” This would include the following translations:

The Tyndale New Testament
The Geneva Bible
The King James Version
The New King James Version
The Modern English Version

I believe most³ Reformation-era Bible translations will have this reading.

And this Greek wording—μονογενὴς υἱός, “only begotten Son”—is easy to harmonize with an orthodox Christology. Christ is nothing if not “the only begotten Son.” That is what he is literally called in the Nicene Creed, though with a slightly different word order: τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ Θεοῦ τὸν Μονογενῆ, usually translated into English as “the only begotten Son of God.”

This is a viable option. Most Christians between the Reformation and 1900 read this in their Bibles. They were not misled—theologically, at least. Christ is indeed the only begotten Son.

Option 2: the only begotten God

But most biblical scholars, evangelical and otherwise, adopt the harder and (apparently) older reading here: “the only begotten God” (μονογενὴς θεός). In general, most people who believe the Bible is God’s Word, who believe Christ is God’s (only begotten) Son and the Savior of the world, and who read New Testament Greek tend to want to adopt older and “harder” readings when Greek manuscripts differ. In general, it makes sense that older readings are closer to the time of the originals. In general, we observe that scribes seem to smooth out the text rather than make it more difficult—so harder readings are more likely to be what the New Testament writers wrote.

And in this case, one can readily imagine a scribe coming along and seeing a phrase that doesn’t appear anywhere else in the New Testament, “the only begotten God,” and assuming that the copy in front of him was wrong. Scribes were known to assimilate language from other passages, especially in the Gospels, which often contain parallel wording. In this case, as a Logos Bible Word Study (see image below) will quickly show, “only begotten Son” does occur elsewhere in the New Testament, especially in John’s writings.

A Logos Bible Word Study on μονογενὴς showing how this word is translated in various instances.

But if instead John wrote the Greek phrase μονογενὴς θεός, then the Spirit said something unique through him at this point. And that leaves us with some translation challenges.

I listed nine options for translation above; a full seven of them were actually translations of μονογενὴς θεός. (This kind of variety is, to say the least, uncommon, especially in a theologically significant passage.) The options, however, come in mainly two categories:

Those seeing this phrase as communicating Christ’s onliness and divinity
Those seeing the phrase as communicating Christ’s sonship and divinity.

Lee Irons has famously argued (in his chapter in Retrieving Eternal Generation and in other writings) that μονογενὴς (monogenes) does not derive from γένος (“kind”) but from γεννάω (“begetting”). He carefully acknowledges that etymology does not determine meaning, but he just as carefully shows from actual Greek usage of the time that μονογενὴς didn’t just mean “only.” It is used in the New Testament to name the “only son” (Luke 7:12) and “only daughter” (Luke 8:42) of regular humans, but in Greek, μονογενὴς was used—so argues Irons—only to modify nouns that are “begotten”; namely, children.

I’m not certain Irons is right here. The Logos Bible Word Study pointed me to several places in 1 Clement and the Septuagint which seem to me to use μονογενὴς to mean only “only” (Ps 24:16 LXX, which speaks of the psalmist’s soul being “alone”; 1 Clem 25:2, which speaks of the Phoenix being the “only one of its kind”).

But Irons also appears to me to be right enough to make his point: μονογενὴς does, in my study as in Irons’, refer to sons and daughters who lack siblings much more often than not. A μονογενὴς is (usually?) an only child.

Somehow, then, the concepts of onliness and sonship probably need to be reflected in any given translation. “The only God” (ESV) and “the only one, himself God” (NET; cf. NLT) and “the unique One, who is himself God” (NLT) are probably not right to leave out the concept of sonship or begottenness. Serious people had serious and cogent reasons for making those choices, but there are good reasons why the 2025 ESV has reincorporated the “sonship” component in their revision of this phrase. The ESV now reads,

No one has ever seen God; God the only Son, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.

When I first saw it, I wondered briefly if the ESV translators were suddenly choosing at this one place to go with the other major Greek reading. But the more I looked, the more I began to realize that, although they were still assuming μονογενὴς θεός, they were picking up the “Son” component of meaning from the –genes portion of the first word of the phrase at issue.⁴

My judgment is confirmed by what Crossway announced about John 1:18 alongside their 2025 update:

This translation incorporates the concept of descent (which is an implication of monogenēs in context) and maintains concordance with the other occurrences of monogenēs in the New Testament. The idea of sonship is evoked by monogenēs in the context of “Father” in John 1:18 and 1:14.

This, in my judgment, is a sensible and defensible approach (that brings the ESV in line with the NRSV, at it happens) to translating a difficult phrase. It uses all the major components of meaning that I believe are present in the Greek.

John 1:18 and the eternal generation of the Son

Except one—or so say the theologians. This already difficult phrase in John 1:18 is made more difficult by the connection the verse bears (or may bear?) to some hot debates within Christian theology. The EFS debate that overtook nerdy portions of evangelicalism starting in 2016 persuaded most evangelicals—here comes my oversimplified hot take—that claiming that the Son was eternally functionally subordinate to the Father (rather than only temporally subordinate during the incarnation, e.g., John 5:19 and other passages) endangers the full equality of the Son with the Father, chips away at divine simplicity,⁵ and therefore undermines the doctrine of the Trinity.

That, quite obviously, is a big deal, and not just to nerds.

In contrast, the “classical theists” who gained public cachet by winning the EFS debate, tend to want to see John 1:18 as an important testimony to the orthodox view, EGS: the eternal generation of the Son. This is the idea that the Son is eternally “begotten” of the Father. They also tend to view classic creedal language as all-important—and they therefore want to see the technical term “begotten” in the English Bible translation of John 1:18.

Here I balk. I oppose EFS; the classical theists got me this far. But my instincts lie in philology—in Greek and in English. And I don’t think “begotten” is a real English word anymore, not when used to refer to children. At best, it’s literary or archaic. More accurately, it’s a technical term in Christian theology. I think the concepts of onliness and sonship (and divinity) need to be present in any faithful translation of John 1:18, but “begotten” I can take or leave. It’s probably good that some translations retain it (NKJV, NASB, LSB); it’s probably good that most don’t.

As D. A. Carson observed in the same volume in which Irons’ paper appeared,

even if someone holds that, on balance of probabilities, μονογενής in John means “only begotten,” one must recognize that the expression itself is an exceedingly weak reed to support the eternal generation of the Son. It needs the support of John 5:26 and other passages.⁶

The doctrine of eternal generation does not stand or fall on one Greek word, nor certainly on one English translation of one Greek word. Carson adds, “If it were decided that μονογενής in its Johannine occurrences is best rendered by ‘one and only’ or the like, it would not rule out the generation of the Son.”⁷

And then Carson quotes a line from Daniel Treier which contains tons of wisdom for my readers who have gotten this far in this intense article: “It is fundamentally misguided to move from isolated exegetical discoveries, such as monogenēs in texts like John 1:18 not necessarily denoting ‘begotten,’ toward denying eternal generation.”⁸ And this truth has to go back the other direction: You can translate this verse without the word “begotten” and not be guilty of denying or even undermining the eternal generation of the Son.

Observe that, although the rendering “only begotten Son” predominates in the West, presumably because of the Latin Vulgate’s unigenitus filius, it is not the only translation of this passage to go back deep into Christian history. And not only does the Reformation-era French Bible have Le seur filz de dieu, “the only Son of God,” but multiple ancient translations render μονογενὴς as “only” in John 1:18 (and other passages) and do not include the specific idea of “begottenness.” See, in Logos if you can, at John 1:14, 18, and 3:16 the Sahidic Coptic, the Bohairic Coptic, the Syriac, the Ethiopic, and the Old Latin. Unless multiple apparently orthodox people over the course of the history of the church were secretly engaged in a plot to undermine the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son, perhaps we can remain content that there are multiple philologically sound and orthodox ways to solve the textual and translational difficulties posed by John 1:18.

The doctrine of eternal generation does not stand or fall on one Greek word, or certainly on one English translation of one Greek word.

Blessed are the peacemakers

Though the KJV and Latin Vulgate loom large in our minds because of our specific cultural heritage, it is very rare that one translation comes to dominate and sideline all others, magnifying the power of its errors. No, we have multiple translations in the evangelical church—and we have tons of theologians and exegetes who aren’t beholden to the translations anyway, who instead take discussions of the Trinity to the final court of appeal, the Hebrew and Greek. And there’s a footnote in the ESV pointing the good readers who can process such things to additional sources on the controversy! I stand here at the Logos Word by Word blog pleading for peace.

At minimum, John 1:18 teaches precious truths about Jesus that we do know from other passages: He is the one and only Son of the Father, and he is himself divine. At maximum, this phrase may actually use a very arresting and utterly unique description of Christ as (see NASB) “the only begotten God.” Orthodoxy is not threatened at all by the minimal or, certainly, the maximal views. Jesus was with God and Jesus was God, as John 1 has already told us. Jesus is with God and Jesus is God, as we know from the rest of the New Testament. Jesus is worthy of the worship Christians have always accorded him. He reveals the Father to us. He is the means to the Father. He is equal with the Father.

The major application of John 1:18: Bend the knee.