Eternal Generation, and a Direct Denial

The fourth century settled what the churches would mean by the word. The Nicene formula says begotten, not made, and of one substance with the Father, and the theologians who defended it developed the idea of eternal generation: the Son is begotten in a way that has no beginning and no before, as light is generated by a source without the source ever having been dark. The point of the doctrine is to hold sonship and full divinity together, which the ordinary sense of begetting cannot do.

The Quran rejects the title in explicit terms. The short chapter on sincerity states that God does not beget and is not begotten and that there is none like him; another passage says that it is not for God to take a son, and that when he decrees a thing he only says be. The rejection is placed among the gravest errors, because associating anything with God is the one thing the Quran presents as unforgivable if unrepented.

The two positions are not reconciled by a distinction, and the atlas does not offer one. It is worth recording accurately what each is denying and affirming: Christian theology denies that the generation is physical or temporal and affirms it as eternal and within the one God, while the Quranic denial addresses the taking of a son as a claim about God nature and about human beings ascribing partners to him. Interfaith discussion has explored whether the two are speaking past each other, and no agreement has emerged.