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1. About Agency

First of all, dia is by no means restricted to meaning agency in each place it is used:

From the Louw-Nida semantic domains lexicon we have:

a by (agent): 90.4
b by (instrument): 90.8
c through (means): 89.76
d on behalf of (benefaction): 90.38
e because of (reason participant): 90.44
f on account of (reason): 89.26
g through (extension): 84.29
h along (extension): 84.32
i during (time): 67.136
j throughout (time): 67.140

This is important because instrumentality can mean significantly more than mere agency. In an agent-principal relationship, I may give my agent the legal authority to act on my behalf, for few or many things. But my own hands may be an instrument of my will, and in such a case there is no sense in which my hands are less liable than I am for what they do.

But this is an imperfect analogy, because we do believe Jesus as God the Son is distinct as a person from God the Father. Unlike mere hands, there is a second person there. But unlike agency, there is also a true unity of being:

Hebrews 1:8 But unto the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever: a sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of thy kingdom. [9] Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated iniquity; therefore God, even thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows. [10] And, Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the works of thine hands:

Consider what the writer of Hebrews is saying here. Is he taking Psalms 102:25 out of context? Of whom is the Psalmist speaking when he says:

“Of old hast thou laid the foundation of the earth: and the heavens are the work of thy hands.”

Is it not Jehovah? It is, when seen in context:

Psa 102:22 When the people are gathered together, and the kingdoms, to serve the LORD. [23] He weakened my strength in the way; he shortened my days. [24] I said, O my God, take me not away in the midst of my days: thy years are throughout all generations. [25] Of old hast thou laid the foundation of the earth: and the heavens are the work of thy hands.

So here we have Hebrews directing us to think of Jesus as the subject of the Psalmist’s praise, praise clearly directed to Jehovah.

And to further bind the two into one, we also have Job speaking of Jehovah as not acting through any lesser being, but only himself, in the act of creation:

Job 9:7 Which commandeth the sun, and it riseth not; and sealeth up the stars. [8] Which alone spreadeth out the heavens, and treadeth upon the waves of the sea. [9] Which maketh Arcturus, Orion, and Pleiades, and the chambers of the south.

Therefore, while Jesus was indeed the instrument of the Father’s creative will, all the praise, all the responsibility, for all of creation, rests in a single being.

2. About John 1:1-3.

However, even if we were to grant a theory of agency, strictly for purposes of trying to understand John 1:3, we are left with a conundrum if we relegate Jesus to the set of things created. By your own theory, Jesus was the agent of creation for all created things, right? Or do you make an exception for Jesus? Because if you do, that exception is explicitly disallowed by the language of John 1:3:

John 1:3 “All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.”

In the first clause, the positive assertion is made. In ordinary contract law this would be enough, based on the rule that whatever is included automatically excludes whatever is left out. But just to make sure we didn’t miss it, John doubles down with the negative assertion of exclusion, basically saying that no created thing, period, came to be that way without him, that is, Jesus. This is a hermetically sealed set, and if this were a contract dispute I could win easy on this language in any reasonable court, hands down.

So we see that John is purposefully distinguishing between the eternal Word (in the beginning the Word was already existing, and was therefore eternal) and lesser, created beings. Why would he do that? Possibly because one of the rampant heresies of his day was the Gnostic worship of angels, which angels they used as an excuse to delve into all manner of wickedness yet claiming to be pure. It’s a long story.

Thus we see how John wrote his God-breathed Gospel to repel one of the great heresies that sought to snuff out the early church. And how he did this I really admire. As a law student, they teach you to structure your arguments from best to worst, with the top one or two coming at the very beginning, to hit your opponent right between the eyes as quickly as possible, and that’s just what John does:

Joh 1:1 “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. [2] The same was in the beginning with God.”

Do you see how he cuts the legs out from under his Gnostic opponents in those first few words? There is no deep secret possessed by the Gnostics. God is not some impossibly secretive, distant spirit who hates the material world, who can only be reached by through an infinity of angelic hierarchies. No, he has come to us and expressed himself to us in person through the eternal and uncreated Word, who could not possibly hate the material world, because it was his own wisdom and power that created it.

And at once John is done with angels and Gnostic secrets and a God for whom personal love is impossible. John’s God reaches down and bursts the barrier between us and eternity, between holy and fallen, by meeting us where we are, in his own person:

John 14:8 “Philip saith unto him, Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us. [9] Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Shew us the Father?”

Believe me when I say, this one concept, that we could experience the forgiveness and love of God directly and personally, had enormous power in the ancient world to change our relationship with God, and Jesus the God-man is exactly how that was accomplished. Islam is still trapped within a Gnostic conception of God, and you can see how well that’s not working out.

BTW, if you are interested in the more technical matters concerning theos and the use or nonuse of the definite article in John 1:1, here are a few links you might find helpful. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask:

http://christiandefense.org/jw_deity.htm

http://christiandefense.org/jw_nwt.htm

http://www.forananswer.org/Top_JW/JWs%20and%20Deity.htm

Peace,