This verse is a key text for demonstrating a fundamental theological category mistake regarding Christian Christology and the polemical conflation of pagan and Christian beliefs.
Surah 39:4:
If Allah had intended to take a son, He could have chosen from what He creates whatever He willed. Exalted is He; He is Allah, the One, the Prevailing.
The verse sets up a conditional hypothetical: if God wanted a son, He would select or adopt one from among His own creation (mimmā yakhluqu).
The Christological Critique: In orthodox Christian theology, as defined by the Council of Nicaea (325 AD), the Son of God is explicitly not part of creation. The Nicene Creed states that Jesus is "begotten, not made" (gennēthenta, ou poiēthenta), meaning He shares the exact same eternal, uncreated divine essence (ousia) as the Father.
By framing "sonship" as something God would choose "from what He creates," the Quran treats the concept of a divine son as an act of adoption or creation.
Critics argue this reveals that the author of the Quran was unfamiliar with mainstream, orthodox Trinitarian theology. Instead, the text argues against a strawman version of sonship—one that aligns more closely with heretical Gnostic, Arian, or Adoptionist sects that existed on the fringes of the pre-Islamic Near East.
In the historical context of 7th-century Western Arabia, Muhammad was dealing with two completely different groups making claims about God's offspring: Meccan polytheists who believed angels were the "daughters of Allah" (banāt Allāh), and Christians who confessed Jesus as the "Son of God."
Historical critics point out that the Quran frequently collapses these two distinct theological frameworks into a single polemical target. The pagan Arabs viewed divine offspring as a literal, biological arrangement (God marrying Jinn to produce daughters).
By using the phrase "He could have chosen from what He creates," Surah 39:4 successfully counters the pagan view (since angels are created beings), but it completely misses the metaphysical nuance of Christian theology (where the Son is uncreated).
To the critic, the text handles "sonship" with a broad brush, viewing any claim of a son as an insult to God's absolute sovereignty (Al-Qahhar), without addressing the actual definitions used by the Christian communities of the Levant.