writings. It must be admitted that such a title is capable of being
misunderstood by the thoughtless, the ignorant and the prejudiced. This was all
the more possible because the heathen in various lands, believing in deities
possessed of material bodies and dominated by evil passions, not unfrequently
declared that their gods had wives and children. But every man of learning is
well aware that the Jews in the time of the Lord Jesus Christ were not
polytheists, did not worship idols, and did not believe in a God possessed of a
material body. As the first disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ were Jews,
obedient to the Law of Moses, and as both they and Christ Himself honoured the
Old Testament as the Word of God
(كلام
اْلله), it is quite impossible for any educated
person to suppose for one moment that the Christians of the earliest times
entertained, any blasphemous belief, worthy of the heathen with regard to God,
or that any unworthy or carnal thought was implied by Christ's own claim to be
the Son of God. Christians then and in all ages can join with the Muslims in
this sense in saying: 'The 1 Originator of the heavens and of the
earth, how should He have a child
(ولد) and He had not a female friend.' Christians
have never, therefore, called Christ
ولد
الله —we take refuge in God from it!—but
إبن
اْلله,
because
|