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This is our series of articles analyzing David Bernard's book, The Oneness of God. You are on the page that is in bold. Click on the links to go to a particular chapter:

A Critical Analysis of Chapter 5 of The Oneness of God by David K. Bernard

"The Son of God"

"Therefore that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God" (Luke 1:35).

Chapter 5 hangs its entire argument on one word: "therefore." When the angel told Mary that the Holy Spirit would come upon her and she would conceive, he added "therefore" that child would be called the Son of God. Bernard takes this to mean that the title "Son of God" is defined by and limited to the Incarnation — that Jesus became the Son at conception and is the Son only in his humanity. Everything that looks like the Son preexisting with the Father gets explained away in light of this "therefore."

It's a tidy framework. And like many tidy frameworks, it works only until you test it against what the Bible actually says.

What Bernard Gets Right

Bernard is absolutely right that Jesus had a real human nature — and that this matters. The early church fought hard against teachers who said Jesus only appeared to be human, that he was a divine spirit wearing a human body like a costume. Bernard rightly rejects this. Jesus got tired. He wept. He grew in wisdom (Luke 2:52). He suffered and died. A real death requires a real body, and the whole point of the Incarnation is that God took on genuine human flesh, not a convincing imitation of it.

Bernard is also right that some people have pushed the distinction between Christ's human and divine natures so far that they end up with what sounds like two separate people sharing one body. The church has always rejected that as well. Jesus is one person, fully God and fully human — not a committee. Bernard's concern for the unity of Christ's person is sound.

The problem is that in guarding against one error, he drives straight into another. In protecting the unity of Christ, he erases the Son's eternal existence — and with it, a massive portion of what the New Testament actually teaches.

"Son" Means What, Exactly?

The heart of Chapter 5 is Bernard's claim that "Son of God" refers to the humanity of Jesus, not to an eternal, distinct person within the Godhead. Before the Incarnation, on this view, there was no Son — only the Father, who is the one person of God. "God the Son," Bernard says, is a phrase not found in the Bible. The Son had a beginning when Mary conceived and will have an ending when Christ hands the kingdom over at the last day (1 Corinthians 15:23–28).

This cuts against what Christians have believed for two thousand years, and it doesn't survive contact with the texts Bernard himself uses.

Consider Luke 1:35 again. The angel says the child "will be called the Son of God" because of his miraculous conception. Bernard takes "will be called" to mean the title "Son" is being assigned at this moment — it starts here. But the angel says he will be called the Son of God, not that he becomes the Son of God. Something can be given a name that reflects what it already is. When Simeon says in Luke 2:32 that Jesus is "a light to bring revelation to the Gentiles," nobody thinks Jesus only became a light at that moment. Luke 1:35 explains why Jesus will bear the title "Son of God" in his earthly life — his miraculous conception makes his divine sonship visible in the flesh. That is not the same as saying his sonship began there.

Bernard quotes John 3:16 — "God gave his only begotten Son" — and acknowledges that the verse refers to someone given and sent. But a gift doesn't begin to exist at the moment it is given. A son doesn't begin to be a son at the moment his father sends him somewhere.

The Creation Problem

Bernard's framework collides hardest with what the New Testament says about creation. Colossians 1:16 says that by the Son — whom Paul has just called "the firstborn over all creation" in verse 15 — "all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible." Verse 17 adds: "He is before all things, and in him all things hold together."

If the Son only began at Mary's conception, how did God create all things through him? Bernard's answer is that God "used his foreknowledge of the Son when he created the world" — the Son was in God's mind as a future plan, so in that sense God created with the Son in view.

But that is not what Colossians 1 says. Paul uses three different prepositions about the Son and creation: in him, through him, and for him. "Through him" describes the Son as the instrument of creation — the one by means of whom God made everything. A plan doesn't create anything. A thought in someone's mind doesn't hold the universe together (v. 17). The text is describing someone who was genuinely present and active at creation. "He is before all things" is a plain statement that the Son personally existed before all created things. If that phrase doesn't mean what it says, what would such a statement even look like?

Hebrews 1:2 says God "made the worlds" through his Son. Then Hebrews 1:10–12 quotes Psalm 102 — a psalm addressed to Yahweh — and applies it directly to the Son: "You, Lord, laid the foundation of the earth in the beginning, and the heavens are the work of your hands." The Son did this. Not a plan. Not a foreknowledge. A person, acting at the beginning of time, who can be addressed as the LORD who laid the earth's foundations.

Boyd makes this point clearly in Oneness Pentecostals and the Trinity: the creation passages aren't isolated verses. They form a consistent picture across John 1:3, 1 Corinthians 8:6, Colossians 1:15–17, and Hebrews 1:2. In every case, the one through whom God made all things is described as genuinely active, genuinely present, and genuinely distinct from the Father who planned it. Reducing this to "God had the Son in mind" doesn't fit the language. It fits what Oneness theology needs the language to say.

John 17:5 — A Memory, Not a Plan

Bernard faces his hardest test in John 17:5. Jesus, in the hours before his crucifixion, prays to the Father: "Glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began."

Bernard says this refers to a glory Jesus possessed only in God's foreordained plan — that he was asking "as a man" for the glory God had always intended for him. The glory he "had" before the world was made was the glory God had planned, not glory he actually possessed as a personal being with the Father.

This reading doesn't hold up for one simple reason: you don't pray for something you only ideally had. Jesus doesn't say "restore me to the glory you planned for me." He says "the glory I HAD with you." The word "had" describes actual possession that came before the world's creation. Jesus is not remembering a blueprint — he is recalling real, shared existence with the Father.

And notice what Bernard's argument requires here. He says "God does not pray, therefore Jesus is speaking as a man." But if the one praying in John 17 is only the human side of Jesus, then it is a human being claiming to have personally possessed glory with God before the world was made. Human nature didn't exist before the Incarnation. That claim makes even less sense than the plain reading: the Son — genuinely, personally, eternally the Son — shared glory with the Father before creation, and is now asking the Father to restore him to it after the cross.

Boyd traces this through John's Gospel and shows that John 17:5 cannot be the exception. Jesus says he came down from heaven (John 6:33, 38, 41). He came from the Father (John 8:42). Before Abraham existed, "I am" (John 8:58). The Son of Man will ascend to "where he was before" (John 6:62). John's entire portrait of Jesus assumes a person who genuinely existed with the Father and came down into human flesh. You cannot hold onto John 17:5 as "ideal preexistence in God's plan" while reading the rest of John at face value. The two don't fit together.

"Begotten" Doesn't Require a Starting Point

Bernard leans hard on Hebrews 1:5, which quotes Psalm 2:7: "This day have I begotten thee." Since the Son was "begotten" — brought forth — Bernard argues there had to be a moment when the Son didn't yet exist. The Son had a beginning. You can't be begotten from eternity.

But Hebrews 1:5 undercuts this when you trace the same quote to its other use in the New Testament. Paul quotes the same Psalm 2:7 in Acts 13:33 and applies it explicitly to the resurrection: "God raised up Jesus… as it is written in the second Psalm, 'You are my Son, today I have begotten you.'" For Paul, "this day I have begotten you" refers to Christ's resurrection and exaltation — not his birth in Bethlehem. The "begetting" language points to Jesus being openly vindicated and declared as the Son in his triumph over death. It's not describing the moment the Son first came into existence.

Grudem's Systematic Theology makes a point worth sitting with: the word "begotten" doesn't require a before-and-after when applied to someone who is eternal. The early church recognized this problem — opponents of the full divinity of Christ used "begotten" to argue the Son must have been created. The answer the church worked out carefully was this: whatever "begotten" means when applied to the eternal Son, it cannot mean "came into existence at a point in time." The Son is not the Father's first creation. He is not a junior God who was made before everything else. He is of the same divine nature as the Father — and his relationship to the Father as Son is eternal, not sequential.

Ironically, Bernard's argument that "begotten" means "had a starting point" is the same logic the Jehovah's Witnesses use to argue the Son was God's first creation. Bernard certainly doesn't want that conclusion. But if you use that reading of "begotten," you've already taken the step toward it.

1 Corinthians 15:28 — The End of the Son?

The most unusual argument in Chapter 5 is that the Son's role will eventually end. Bernard cites 1 Corinthians 15:24–28, where Paul says Christ will hand over the kingdom to God the Father, and "the Son himself will be subject to him who put all things under him." Bernard takes this to mean the Sonship will conclude — the role will have served its purpose, and what remains is God alone, no longer in a Father-Son distinction.

But read what the text actually says. The Son will be "subject" to the Father. Submission is not the same as non-existence. A son can remain a son while honoring his father's authority. The passage is describing the end of Christ's role as king over the present age of sin and death — he has conquered every enemy, death included, and hands that completed work over to the Father. It says nothing about the Son ceasing to exist as a person in an eternal relationship with the Father.

Bernard himself acknowledges that Revelation 22 describes the eternal state. And Revelation 22:3 says: "The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him." Even in eternity, the Lamb is distinct. The throne belongs to "God and the Lamb" — not to God alone, not to a single undivided person. The Lamb doesn't dissolve into the Father after 1 Corinthians 15:28. He is still there, ruling together with the Father, in the eternal city.

If Bernard's reading were correct, the eternal state would feature God alone — no Son, no Lamb, no distinction. Revelation says the opposite.

The "Two Speakers" Problem

Bernard's key for reading Jesus' words in the Gospels is the idea that Jesus spoke sometimes "as God" (the Father side) and sometimes "as man" (the Son side). When Jesus prays, shows limitation, or is subordinate to the Father, he's speaking as the Son — his humanity. When he makes divine claims or acts with divine power, he's speaking as the Father — his deity.

Boyd examines this carefully, and the problem is significant. The framework requires Jesus to be constantly switching between divine and human "modes" with no warning, sometimes mid-sentence, in ways the text never signals. Look at John 6:40, where Jesus says the Father's will is "that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day." Bernard's reading says Jesus is speaking as the Father when he says "I will raise him up" — but in the very same sentence he refers to himself as "the Son" in the third person. Is Jesus the Father calling himself "the Son" while speaking as the Father? The text gives no indication of any such switch.

Even more telling is the pattern throughout John 6 where Jesus says he "came down from heaven." On Bernard's view, these are the Father speaking through the human Son. But Jesus says he came from the one "who sent me" — in the same sentences. The sender is consistently distinguished from the one being sent. If Jesus is the Father speaking in these verses, then the Father is saying he came down from the Father. That is incoherent.

The "two speakers" device ends up creating the very problem it was supposed to solve: a Jesus whose own words don't hold together unless you apply a key that Jesus never gave his disciples and that the New Testament never mentions.

The Real Logical Problem

Step back from the individual arguments and the structural problem becomes clear. Bernard's entire case in Chapter 5 rests on this assumption: if the Son is a real, distinct, eternal person rather than just the human nature of Jesus, there must be two Gods. His logic goes — God is one; the Son is distinct from the Father; therefore the Son must be the human side of a single person, not a separate divine person.

But this assumes that "one God" means "one person." The whole Trinitarian position challenges that assumption. Deuteronomy 6:4 — "The LORD our God, the LORD is one" — declares the unity of God's being. It does not say God can only be one person. And the New Testament, without ever abandoning the conviction that there is one God, consistently presents the Father, the Son, and the Spirit as genuinely distinct from one another while sharing equally in the one divine nature.

What Bernard's framework ultimately requires him to say is that every passage where the Son acts in divine ways before the Incarnation — creating the world, sharing glory with the Father, being described as before all things and holding all things together — is either really the Father speaking through Jesus, or is only an ideal plan in God's mind. He has to apply this to John 1, Colossians 1, Hebrews 1, John 6, John 8, and John 17. That is a long list of texts to reinterpret around a single prior commitment. When a reading has to bend that many passages to survive, it's worth asking whether the reading is following the Bible or leading it.

A Word to the Reader

If you've spent time in a Oneness church, you've probably heard Chapter 5's argument taught as the plain, straightforward reading of Scripture: the Son began at Bethlehem, is the humanity of Jesus, and "God the Son" is man-made language the Bible doesn't use. It can feel like the evidence is overwhelming.

But ponder on John 17:5 for a few minutes. Jesus, hours from the cross, prays to his Father and asks to be restored to the glory he had with him before the world was made. Is that a man praying about a theological plan God once had? Or is it a Son — personal, eternal, genuinely the Son — asking his Father to receive him back to where he was before he came?

The New Testament gives you a Jesus who came from the Father, became one of us, died in our place, rose in triumph, and returned to the Father who loved him before the world began. That is the whole story. Take the eternal Son out of it and you don't get a simpler Gospel. You get a different God.

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