KenTheExegete

This article is a continuation of part one refuting a group of Unitarian TikTok guys who debate with @IglesiaNiChristos against two of my brothers in Christ @TheWordandI and @OneWayApologetics .

Is Paul saying that Jesus Christ came into being and not eternal?

Galatians 4:4- But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law,

The following excerpt is taken from the monumental work titled The Incarnate Christ and His Critics: A Biblical Defense, authored by Robert M. Bowman Jr. & J. Ed Komoszewski, published by Kregel Academic, Grand Rapids, MI, 2024, Part 2: Like Father, Like Son: Jesus’ Divine Attributes, Chapter 11: The Paradoxical Person, pp. 209-11.

Careful consideration of the verbs used in the verse confirms this understanding. The verb commonly translated “born” and used twice in Galatians 4:4 is genomenon, an aorist participle literally meaning “becoming” (more on this point shortly). As participles, these verbs are grammatically subordinate to the main (indicative) verb, which is the aorist exapesteilen which means (“sent forth“). In his textbook on the New Testament Greek Grammar, Daniel B. Wallace notes that “when the aorist participle is related to an aorist main verb, the participle will often be contemporaneous (or simultaneous) to the action of the main verb.”¹⁰ This seems most likely to be the case here. The statement would then mean that becoming “of a woman” and “under the law” was the way in which God sent forth his Son. It is very unlikely, grammatically speaking, that these participial phrases describe actions or events that came before God sent forth his Son.

Dustin Smith agrees that the participles express action that occurred at the same time as the action of the main verb, but he concludes that “the commissioning of Jesus to redeem those under the Law occurred precisely at his birth,” citing examples of “other prophetic servants who were commissioned from their birth” (citing Isa. 49:1, 5; Jer. 1:5; Gal, 1:15).¹¹ This explanation glosses over the fact that none of those examples use the language of “sending” in reference to a prophet’s birth. Isaiah says that the Lord called the servant from the womb and formed him there to be his servant (Isa. 49:1, 5). Ironically, the other two passages say God knew or set apart the prophet or apostle before he was born (Jer. 1:5; Gal 1:15), which tells us these texts are making a quite different point than what Smith derived from them.

The precise meaning of genomenon, commonly translated “born” in Galatians 4:4, is the focal point of some debate. Unitarian author Anthony Buzzard asserts repeatedly, without citing any references or other examples, that genomenon (a form of ginomai) simply means “coming into existence,” and therefore Galatians 4:4 means that God’s Son came into existence when he was born of a woman.¹² Similarly, David Bernard repeatedly claims, based on the KJV rendering “made of a woman” the Son was literally made to exist at his birth.¹³ Somewhat more substantively, Oneness Pentecostal author Brent Graves defends the translation “made” (KJV) in order to establish the idea that the Son was “made” or brought into existence at his human birth, noting that the word ginomai means “made” in a few other texts (John 1:3; Rom. 1:3; Heb. 11:3).¹⁴

In order to buttress his claim about ginomai, Buzzard quotes James Dunn, not realizing that what Dunn says in that quotation actually contradicts Buzzard’s simplistic lexical claim. This is because Dunn states that “it is possible” that in both Romas 8:3 and Galatians 4:4 Paul meant “to imply that the Son of God was preexistence,” although Dunn thinks it more likely that Paul did not intend to imply that idea.¹⁵ Obviously, if genomenon simply means “came into existence,” then Galatians 4:4 could not possibly mean that the Son was preexistence; but Dunn admits an interpretation involving preexistence was possible, even if (in his opinion) unlikely.

In actuality, ginomai is one of the most common and flexible Greek verbs, occurring some 668 time in the New Testament and with a variety of meanings (come into being, be born, be made, arise, come about, happen, take place, become, move, prove to be, be there, belong to, etc.), depending on the context.¹⁶ Neither Buzzard nor Graves acknowledges this breadth of usage or addresses the meaning of the word in its context.

Dustin Smith also argues that the expression “born of a woman” in Galatians 4:4 appears in a number of other biblical texts, “each indicating the normal act of birth.”¹⁷ Of course, orthodox Christians believe that Jesus Christ came into this world through a real, human birth. However, those other texts all use gennetos (Job 11:2 LXX, 12; 14:1; 15:14; 25:4; Matt. 11:11; Luke 7:28),¹⁸ an entirely different word than the one used in Galatians 4:4 (genomenon, a form of ginomai). This is why “born,” though a suitable rendering in idiomatic English, is not a precise translation of the Greek word Paul uses here. Galatians 4:4 also uses the preposition ek (“from,” “out of”) with gunaikos (“woman”), unlike any of the other idioms translated “born of a woman.” The significance of this preposition is likely to be connected to the unusual use of exapostellō, “sent forth” or “sent out,” a word using the same word ex/ek as a prefix and occurring in Paul only here in Galatians 4:4, 6. By using both exapostellō for God the Father’s action and ek for the role of the woman (Mary), Paul emphasizes the human Jesus Christ’s dual origin: He came from God in heaven and from Mary his mother.

(3) The arguments against seeing preexistence in Galatians 4:4 depend on isolating the various parts of the verse from one another. It is the way these parts work together that indicates preexistence: “God sent forth his Son, becoming of a woman.” The third element- the contrast between Jesus as God’s Son when God sent him forth; by his redemptive work, we may receive the status of God’s sons by adoption. Paul’s statement here not only conflicts with Unitarianism’s denial of Christ’s preexistence, but it also strongly conflicts with the notion, developed in different ways theologically by progressive Christians, Latter-day Saints, and others, that all human beings are inherently just as much God’s “sons” or children as Jesus was.

(4) We have not even come to the most crucial piece of evidence. What really clinches the conclusion that the Son is being spoken of as a preexistent person is the fourth element- the parallel statement in verse 6 that “God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son.” As Gordon Fee observes, “It is the double sending, where in the second instance God’s sending forth the Spirit of his Son can only refer to the preexistent Spirit of God, now understood equally as the Spirit of the Son, that makes certain that in the first instance Paul is also speaking presuppositionally about Christ’s preexistence.”¹⁹ The implication is clear: first God sent his Son from heaven to redeem his people, and then he sent the Spirit of his Son from heaven to dwell within them so they could become children of God. This is practically the theology if the Gospel of John in a nutshell, and it appears in one of Paul’s earliest epistles! Those who deny that Galatians 4:4 speaks of the Son as preexistent generally have not addressed this point. ²⁰ These four exegetical considerations, taken cumulatively, lead quite definitely to the conclusion that in Galatians 4:4 Paul meant that God sent forth his Son from heaven to become a human being. God then sent forth the Spirit of his Son from heaven to make the redemption that the Son provided effective within us, so that we might know God as our Father. We have here, in one of the earliest extant Christian writings, the outline of Christian narrative that is the framework for the doctrine of the Trinity.²¹

There will be a part three to this!

10. Daniel B. Wallace, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament

11. Smith, “A Socinian Reply,” 170-71.

12. Buzzard and Hunting, Doctrine of the Trinity, 17, 311; Buzzard, Jesus was not a Trinitarian, 147, 286.

13. Bernard, Oneness of God, 99, 104, 149, 291.

14. R. Brent Graves, The God of Two Testaments, rev. ed. (Hazelwood, MO: Word Aflame, Press, 2000), chapter 3, n. 13 (Kindle ed.).

15. Dunn, Christology in the Making, 46 quoted in Buzzard and Hunting, Doctrine of the Trinity, 312.

16. BDAG, “ginomai,” 196-99 (note on the length of this one entry!).

17. Smith, “A Socinian View,” 136 n. 31.

18. See also Sirach 10:18, “those born of a women” (génnēmasin gunaikṓn).

19. Fee, Pauline Christology, 214-15. See also Gathercole, Preexistent Son, 29

20. E.g., Karl-Josef Kuschel, Born before All Time? The Dispute over Christ’s Origin, trans. John Bowden (New York: Crossroad, 1992), 272-77; Dunn, Christology in the Making, 39; Buzzard and Hunting, Doctrine of the Trinity, 203; Smith, “A Socinian View,” 136-37; “A Socinian Reply,” 170-71.

21. For a different approach finding implicit Trinitarian theology in the passage, see Scott R. Swain, “Heir through God”: Galatians 4:4-7 and the Doctrine of the Trinity,” in Galatians and Christian Theology: Justification, the Gospel, and Ethics in Paul’s Letter, ed. Mark W. Elliott, Scott J. Hafemann, N. T. Wright, and John Frederick (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2014), 258-67.