His Holiness Pope Shenouda III explains that the phrase “begotten, not made” as applied to Christ does not mean a physical or sexual birth, but denotes a theological generation unrelated to instinct or animal acts.

Distinction Between Physical Birth and Spiritual/Natural Generation:

• Sexual birth is a physical act proper to living creatures and tied to sexual instinct.

• The “begotten, not made” is not a bodily birth; it is like the birth of thought from the mind or the emission of a ray from the sun: a natural generation but non-bodily.

Illustrative Examples from Nature and Language:

• As thought is born from mind, this is not a bodily birth but a real generation from a different essence.

• A ray is born from the sun and heat from fire; these are “births” in nature that are not sexual.

Figurative Uses of “Son/sonship”:

• Scripture uses sonship in figurative senses: sons of light, children of the age, sons of the homeland… these are not physical births.

• Likewise a teacher calls his disciples “my children” without any physical meaning.

The Particular Nature of Christ’s Sonship:
When we say Christ is “begotten, not made” we mean His sonship is essentially theological, not adoption or an honorific title, but a birth from the Father’s nature, not a physical act.

Spiritual Conclusion:
The issue is one of conceptual distinction: the word “birth” is used for multiple kinds — physical, natural non-physical, and figurative — and Christ’s divine generation belongs to the category of generation from essence, not to bodily or instinctive births.

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