God said it, I believe, that settles it.

But what does it settle?

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Accepting Christian Scripture as true does not determine its meaning. Interpretation is always necessary, and the more important the theological claim, the more important it is to interpret the claim in a sensible or true way.

By the way, this song is just too good not to watch, since I mentioned its title.

For instance, Christians affirm that Jesus is the Son of God, but what does this mean? And, crucially, should we understand this affirmation “literally”? Is it traditional Christian theology to claim that Jesus is literally the Son of God, or is that a departure from Christian theology? What does it mean to say that Jesus is literally the Son of God?

Or what about the claim that the church is the body of Christ? Does that make sense literally or only in some other way?

Such questions invite reflection on the meaning of words, the meaning of meaning, and the possibilities of communication. That’s where I start, before turning to some examples of theological assertions and querying whether they should be interpreted literally.

By the way, I first presented this essay in a meeting of fellow Christians, all members of the Churches of Christ, and I gave myself the task of investigating whether the claim “Jesus is literally the Son of God” makes sense—or what sense it is supposed to make. That setting intrudes itself in some of my sentences below.

Words and Meaning

I do believe words have meaning, and communication is possible. I have some hope that this brief essay can communicate a meaning, and that readers will be able to discern something close to the concepts that exist in the head of the author of this text—if they want to. Postmodern literary theories have taught us that texts can communicate in multiple ways and readers are involved in the business of constructing meaning with texts, but at least some times—and, I think, almost all the time—the meaning readers aim at constructing with the text is the meaning that the author intended. Authors feel justified at times in complaining that readers have misconstrued their intentions, that is, that the texts have been misinterpreted. Such complaining happens frequently when authors respond to reviews of their books: “That’s not what I meant!”

Or, let me quote Pope Pius XII, who wrote in a famous encyclical in 1943, “There is no one indeed but knows that the supreme rule of interpretation is to discover and define what the writer intended to express” (Divino Afflante Spiritu 34). The good bishop then immediately undergirds his assertion by quoting Athanasius (Against the Arians 1.54). He could have quoted a number of other early Christian writers, including Augustine: “The aim of its [= divine scripture’s] readers is simply to find out the thoughts and wishes of those by whom it was written down and, through them, the will of God, which we believe these men followed as they spoke” (On Christian Doctrine 2.5.6).

Let me say it again: I do believe that texts can communicate meanings, though I also recognize some of the difficulties in making such a claim. And because texts can communicate meanings, I also believe that it is possible to translate a text from one language to another. An English translation of the Bible, for instance, can communicate the same meaning as what is communicated by the biblical texts in their original languages.

No, that is saying too much for translation. Let me put it this way: an English Bible can communicate an approximation of the meaning communicated by the texts in their original language—an approximation, not the same meaning, just an approximation. Greek words do not correspond perfectly with English words, just as English words do not correspond perfectly with English words. Agape means something very similar to “love,” but not exactly the same thing, just as the English word “adore” means something very similar to “love” but not exactly the same thing. Of course, the word “love” itself has various shades of meaning, depending on whether we’re talking about loving our spouse or loving God or loving ice cream. And then there’s development in language: the phrase “making love” in a movie from the 1940s was intended to communicate something different from the way the same phrase was employed in movies from the 1970s.

Such variables in language have led some people to declare translation to be impossible—an overstatement, to be sure, but one that captures a significant truth. We can, with more precision, say that translation is challenging and always imprecise. And so we commonly give the Bible-study advice that you need to check your Scriptural passage in more than one translation so that you can discern different nuances of the meaning of the original language text.

All of the foregoing is prolegomena. Now for the main item.

Son of God

Is Jesus the Son of God? Yes, of course. I am a Christian talking to Christians, and the assertion that Jesus is the Son of God is a basic Christian affirmation. According to the traditional English wording of the most well-known verse of the Bible, God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. Ask the Pope or the President, Barton Stone or Alexander Campbell, and they’ll all tell you that Jesus is the Son of God. Now, if you ask what they mean by that, or in what way Jesus is the Son of God, or what implications people should derive from that status, the similarities among them will quickly evaporate. Arius believed that Jesus was the Son of God. So did Marcion. And Irenaeus and Athanasius believed it. I assume the demons believe it, just as the Epistle of James says that the demons believe other basic elements of Christian theology.

Churches of Christ have traditionally followed a course of strategic ambiguity regarding the exact signification of Jesus’ divine sonship. Let me be more specific: churches of Christ have often not followed the path of mainstream Christianity in regard to some aspects of the doctrine of God.

Many Christians throughout the past couple millennia have thought it very important to specify with some precision the way in which Jesus is the Son of God, to define in some detail the relationship between Jesus and the Father, to bring more exactitude to this discussion than the bare phrase “Son of God” could do. If the declaration of Jesus’ divine sonship unites followers of Athanasius with followers of Arius and followers of Marcion, then it is not a very useful declaration, it has often been thought. We need to define God as the creator of heaven and earth—thus excluding the beliefs of Marcion—and we need to draw out the implications of divine sonship as entailing that Jesus is (for example) “light of light, true God of true God, begotten, not made”—and this next bit is crucial, so I will cite the Greek of the Nicene Creed—homoousios with the Father, not homoiousios but homoousios, of the same substance—not similar, same. Many Christian groups have historically been so concerned to declare Jesus to be very God that they have recited some version of the creed every single week.

Churches of Christ have traditionally not followed this practice, and have indeed left the matter open as to what exactly people mean when they declare Jesus to be Son of God. In the past few decades, however, there has been among some leaders in churches of Christ an effort to elevate a traditional doctrine of the Trinity to a fellowship issue (see Mark Powell, Brad East, Keith Stanglin; and relatedly Leonard Allen).

I wonder, though, if we could ask Athanasius, or Arius, or Marcion—or whoever, the Pope or Barton Stone or Mark Powell—whether Jesus was literally the Son of God, what they would say. What does it mean for someone to be literally the son of someone else?

I have two sons, and I think we would all agree that both of them are literally my sons, though one of them has inherited genetic material from me and the other one hasn’t. One of them is my biological son and the other is my adopted son, and this latter son therefore has another father who is his biological father. Is my adopted son’s biological father the literal father of my adopted son? Hmm, maybe, but I also am his literal father, and now I’m not sure what “literal” means in this context.

The New Testament gives me the assurance that I myself am a son of God. According to the apostle Paul, all who are led by the Spirit are sons of God (Rom 8:14). Am I literally a son of God? Oh, man, I don’t know. If you’re making me answer, I guess I’d say “yes, I am literally a son of God.”

What about Jesus? Well, if I am literally a son of God, surely Jesus also is. But, again, I’m not sure what the word “literally” accomplishes in this context. At any rate, Christians who have thought about this issue of the relationship between Jesus and the Father have succeeded in offering some substance to the phrase “Son of God” as applied to Jesus.

The first thing to note is that Jesus did not become the Son of God at any time, and certainly not at the time of his birth from Mary, as if the phrase “Son of God” can apply to the Second Person of the Trinity only from two thousand years ago, but not before then. No, that is ridiculous, absurd—indeed, heretical. The Father did not become the Father at some point in history, and the Son did not become the Son. These terms—Father and Son—are clues to their eternal relationship. So, the phrase “Son of God” does not refer to his birth from Mary by the Holy Spirit. Rather, it refers to his essence, as begotten of the Father before all ages; before time, the Son was begotten of the Father, so that there was no time when the Son was not. Here, note well, we have left Arianism behind. There is, of course, no mother involved in this eternal begetting. Is it a literal begetting? I would rather not apply the term literal to it. Like much religious language, these terms—Father, Son, begetting—are clues to a reality that transcends human language, and the term “literal” is usually too mundane.

Or perhaps I should say that “literally” is not mundane enough. It is a word that is notoriously and increasingly difficult to pin down. The word is often merely an intensifier, signifying something like “really” or “to a great extent.” You can imagine someone saying, “My boss has me literally running around in circles,” or “Since the semester began I’ve been literally walking a tightrope with these classes.” The current American president has said that canceling the tariffs he unilaterally imposed on imported goods “would literally destroy the United States of America” (TMD, linking to this Truth posted Aug 29, 2025). What he meant by this assertion is anyone’s guess, but I leave open the possibility that this is another instance in which President Trump’s supporters would council us to take him “seriously but not literally”—although I myself would advise that in this instance we do neither. At any rate, we all agree that in this post the president could not have meant the term “literally” in a literal way, or else his statement is nonsense. The Oxford English Dictionary records the earliest such use of the term “literal” in 1857, when the Young Men’s Magazine included this evaluation of some sort of summer camp: “It is a literal hell.”

Given such a common signification to the word “literal,” we might wonder again what meaning is conveyed by the declaration that Jesus is literally the Son of God. Does such a declaration foreclose Arianism—or embrace it? Does it have reference to the eternal begetting of traditional Trinitarian theology, or is its purview Mary’s conception of the Christ child by the Holy Spirit?

Again, traditional Christian theology has taken great pains to define the particular ways in which Jesus is Son of God. Does the affirmation that Jesus is “literally” the Son of God cohere with or diverge from these traditional definitions? Does it affirm or deny the Nicene definition of the Trinity? Or does it not address that issue at all? If the latter, what issue does it address? Or, why make the affirmation?

The term “literally” is too ambiguous for me to provide answers to these questions. If those who affirm this declaration cannot answer these questions either, then I doubt the value of the declaration. It has become literally meaningless.

Body of Christ

Theological language becomes even more tenuous when we adopt the Bible’s descriptors for the people of God, such as “body of Christ.”

Now, the phrase “body of Christ” has a variety of significations in Scripture. If we think about the “literal” body of Christ, our minds probably picture a crucifixion victim, or we ponder the doctrine of the incarnation. But the Christian ritual of communion also involves something called “the body of Christ,” which appears to outside observers to be some sort of bread. This ritual derives some of its meaning from the Last Supper, in which Jesus held a loaf of bread and said, “This is my body” (Matt 26:26).

Is that bread literally the body of Christ? Well, who are you asking? There is a venerable Christian interpretation of the communion bread such that after it has been consecrated it does truly, really become the body of Christ (CCC 1373–81). Many Christians would balk at such a notion, churches of Christ among them (at least, in my experience), and they might say that the bread is only symbolically the body of Christ, or, perhaps, something more than a symbol but less than the full reality.

Then again, even people who believe in Transubstantiation don’t necessarily talk about the bread and wine being now literally the body and blood of Jesus. The Catechism of the Catholic Church instead says that “Christ himself, living and glorious, is present in a true, real, and substantial manner” (1413). In the Eucharist, the events of Christ’s Passion “become in a certain way present and real” (1363). “[I]n this sacrament the true Body of Christ is made substantially present for us” (2120). The Catechism quotes Thomas Aquinas as explaining that the presence of Christ in the Eucharist “cannot be apprehended by the senses, but only by faith” (1381). I assume then that Thomas would not want to use the word “literally” in his assertion that the bread is the body of Christ.

According to the Catholic theologian Matthew Levering: “Such hyperrealism is rejected by the Catholic Church. Instead, Christ is present truly and substantially, but in a sacramental mode that ensures that this is not and cannot be cannibalism” (p. 55). And the Eastern Orthodox theologian Radu Bordeianu similarly says: “when one receives Communion, it tastes like bread and wine, but it is in fact the Body and Blood of Christ, even though it is not tangibly different from unconsecrated bread and wine” (p. 82).

And then the New Testament uses the phrase “body of Christ” in reference to the church (esp. Rom 12; 1 Cor 12). Christians have thus talked about the people of God being the hands and feet of Jesus. But I think it is true to say that no one would want to affirm that Christians are literally the hands and feet of Jesus (whatever “literally” means), or that the church is literally the body of Christ.

Literal Metaphors

It seems like we would say that the description of the church as the body of Christ is a metaphor, and was so intended by the apostle Paul. Maybe that means that the literal sense of the claim that the church is the body of Christ is a metaphorical sense, that if we are to take it literally we should not interpret it in a literal fashion.

Is it the same for the claim that Jesus is the Son of God?

Let’s see what C. S. Lewis says about language and theology. The following passage appears about halfway through his famous essay “Is Theology Poetry?” (1944, pdf).

Theology certainly shares with poetry the use of metaphorical or symbolical language. The first Person of the Trinity is not the Father of the Second in a physical sense. The Second Person did not come “down” to earth in the same sense as a parachutist, nor reascend into the sky like a balloon, nor did He literally sit at the right hand of the Father. Why, then, does Christianity talk as if all these things did happen? The agnostic thinks that it does so because those who founded it were quite naively ignorant and believed all these statements literally, and we later Christians have gone on using the same language through timidity and conservatism.

Lewis goes on to discuss the point, and—as you surely know—it would be better for you to read him than me. At any rate, I’ll summarize. Lewis has two answers to the question posed in the quoted passage: (1) the earliest Christians probably never gave it a thought (this imagery that should not be taken literally), never asked the question, but as soon as they asked the question in the second century, they knew the answer was that the language did not describe reality in a literal sense. (2) We cannot cease to use metaphor and symbol, because that’s how our language works. As Lewis goes on to say: “all language about things other than physical objects is necessarily metaphorical.”

More recently, the Anglican and philosopher Keith Ward has written helpfully on metaphor in the Bible, and he devotes a section of his book to the metaphor of divine Sonship (pp. 75–83), which he concludes with this statement: “we need always to bear in mind that saying that Jesus is the Word or the Son of God, though it is true, is a metaphorical statement with many levels of meaning. To put it in a more traditional way, it is a ‘mystery’, a truth of faith that cannot be put in a straightforwardly literal and readily comprehensible way.”

Conclusion

Like I said: God said it, I believe, and that settles it. But perhaps it is still worth contemplating what we mean by the language we employ.

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