My last Blog ended with a speculation about "God". As a paid-up (in every sense) member of the Church of England, I sometimes recite the "Creed": the words "We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God eyc..etc". There's a lot of it which I don't believe; but there is a let-out for me here, in that "We" (those who are saying this in unison), on the whole, do believe this. But I have misgivings. My problem (as is the case for a great many of people) resides in "the only-begotten Son of God". 

There seems to be no evidence for Jesus claiming to be "the Son of God" himself. For instance, in Matthew 6:14 Jesus speaks of "your father" and "our father". Even the late John only says "he that has seen me has seen the Father". What is clear from the gospels is that Jesus taught, by speech and  example, that prayer, for everyone, should be carried out as if  God was their father - a way of speech reminiscent of Isaiah's "Lord, you are our father" (Isaiah 64:8). For me, this implies that the idea of  "Christ, the only-begotten Son of God" was invented along with the first creed in 140 AD.