Replies

1. About Revelation 3:14.

As for Rev 3:14, you’re right, the meaning of the text is not esoteric. But neither should these words be forced to say things the inspired writer didn’t actually say.

For example, the passage reads:

Rev 3:14 And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write; These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God;

Note the last clause. The word “arche” is used. Per the Louw-Nida lexicon, arche can mean any number of things, depending on the semantic context:

a beginning (aspect): 68.1
b beginning (time): 67.65
c first cause: 89.16
d sphere of authority: 37.55
e ruler: 37.56
f supernatural power: 12.44
g elementary aspect: 58.20
h corner: 79.106

You can see that “arche” always has to do with primacy of some sort, but the exact kind of primacy must be determined by context. Given what we learned from John 1:3, that God through John does not want us to consider Jesus a created being (remember, the text explicitly confirms that all created beings without exception are in fact creations of Jesus, and you have not refuted this) we know that the primacy of arche here has to do with either authority or causation (see semantic category 3 above), or even perhaps both.

And so the passage could as easily read:

Rev 3:14 And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write; These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the [first cause,source,origin] of the creation of God;

Bottom line, John 1:3 remains your obstacle to any theory of creature-Creator agency relationship. The creature you need to have in place does not exist until Jesus creates him. He is an undocumented creature. You have yet to refute this.

2. On Agency

But you may say, well, what about having some statement somewhere that Jesus and God are indeed the same being? Wouldn’t you need to have that to discredit the idea of agency?

No, because your agency theory breaks down all by itself in the light of Scripture. Agency, when it occurs in the Bible as related to God, has certain properties. The angel in Revelation is a great example. You notice what happens when John gets confused and begins to treat the agent as being fully the principal:

Rev 22:8-9 “And I John saw these things, and heard them. And when I had heard and seen, I fell down to worship before the feet of the angel which shewed me these things. [9] Then saith he unto me, See thou do it not: for I am thy fellowservant, and of thy brethren the prophets, and of them which keep the sayings of this book: worship God.”

What are those last two words? Worship God. Any creature who is an agent of God MUST refuse worship, for only God may be worshipped. Or do you wish have it suggested that God has instituted the heinous idolatry of angel worship? God forbid. I believe to a certainty you oppose idolatry.

As did the apostles, who were more than once accounted as gods among the pagans, and who uniformly reacted as did the angel of Revelation, refusing to accept worship that was due only to God. See Acts 10:25-27

This demonstrates an important fact about God. However willing he may be to delegate tasks to his creatures, he is careful that none be worshipped but himself:

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Isa 48:11 “For mine own sake, even for mine own sake, will I do it: for how should my name be polluted? and I will not give my glory unto another.”

And in all those creature-Creator agency relationships that the Bible actually documents, that is exactly how it works. But with Jesus there are new rules:

Mat 2:2 Saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him.

Mat 8:2 And, behold, there came a leper and worshipped him, saying, Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. [3] And Jesus put forth his hand, and touched him, saying, I will; be thou clean. And immediately his leprosy was cleansed.

Mat 9:18 While he spake these things unto them, behold, there came a certain ruler, and worshipped him, saying, My daughter is even now dead: but come and lay thy hand upon her, and she shall live. [19] And Jesus arose, and followed him, and so did his disciples.

Mat 14:33 Then they that were in the ship came and worshipped him, saying, Of a truth thou art the Son of God. [34] And when they were gone over, they came into the land of Gennesaret.

Mat 15:25 Then came she and worshipped him, saying, Lord, help me. [26] But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it to dogs.

Mat 28:17 And when they saw him, they worshipped him: but some doubted.

John 9:35 Jesus heard that they had cast him out; and when he had found him, he said unto him, Dost thou believe on the Son of God? [36] He answered and said, Who is he, Lord, that I might believe on him? [37] And Jesus said unto him, Thou hast both seen him, and it is he that talketh with thee. [38] And he said, Lord, I believe. And he worshipped him.

Luk 24:51 And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he was parted from them, and carried up into heaven. [52] And they worshipped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy: [53] And were continually in the temple, praising and blessing God. Amen.

Joh 20:27 Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing. [28] And Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God. [29] Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.

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So here’s your dilemma. If, as you have said, we must follow Scripture wherever it leads, and I agree with you on that, then it is imperative to resolve this apparent breakdown in your theory of agency, because Jesus is righteous and if he were a righteous creature, he would have in every instance above refused to accept the worship due only to God.

To worship less than God is what idolatry is by definition, and a righteous creature, no matter how lofty, could not insult the glory of God by receiving worship. God does not give his glory to another. If Jesus was a mere creature, and accepted worship, he would be a defective agent, acting out of scope to his duties, and not serving the stated purposes of the principal, thus making himself morally inferior to the apostles and the angels, and that is impossible.

3. On John 1:1

Nevertheless, because God knows we are prone to ignore the obvious, he has provided us with an unmistakable way-marker in John 1:1. Of course I agree capitalization is something the translator does. However, the caps chosen for this verse are well within the bounds of reasonable translation practice, as the Logos is clearly Christ by simply reading the passage as a whole.

Furthermore, John makes sure the reader understands that the Logos is not a pure identity of or quality of God, by stating that he was with God:

John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

The personal identity of the Word is made crystal clear in John 1:14, where the Word becomes flesh and dwells among us. This is the same being who was both with God and was God, per John 1:1.

But what about the so-called missing definite article in the third clause? Is the NWT correct to translate it “a god,” as opposed to God? No, it is a patent mistranslation. Ask your expert AT Robertson. Put in short form, the word order plays a big role in the Greek, and confirms the traditional Trinitarian translation. Here’s the clause:

kai theos en ho logos

In literal sequence:

And God he was, the Word.

The comma is supplied because the subject is confirmed to be Logos by the definite article “ho.” Therefore what John has done is emphasize Christ’s deity by pushing it to the front of the clause, what is called the emphatic position. If he were a poster on FR, an equivalent rendering might look like this:

And !!!GOD!!! he was, the Word.

Emphatic indeed.

But why no definite article in front of “theos?” Because if, in Greek, he had said this:

The God is The Word…

He would have been establishing a textual basis for Modalism, where there is an absolute identity between God and Jesus. Basically, by leaving out the definite article on “theos,” he short-circuits the Oneness Pentecostals and all other such groups.

Alright you say, then why isn’t theos an indefinite object, as in one of many gods, as in the NWT? If it lacks the definite article, why can’t we just supply the indefinite article?

Because Greek just doesn’t have an indefinite article. If you want to know whether or not to use one, you have to look at each case one at a time, using the rules of common Greek usage to make your decision. And in this case, it’s not hard to figure out, not esoteric, as you say, but sitting right out there in plain sight.

For a quick demonstration of this, take a quick look at John 1:6, just a few verses below:

John 1:6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.

Now look at the Greek:

Egeneto anthropos apestalmenos para theos, onoma auto Iwannes

Notice “para theos.” It means “from God,” right? Not “from a god.” Else the passage would have to read:

John 1:6 There was a man sent from [a god,] whose name was John.???

So then what’s the rule? To be consistent with the proposed NWT rule that gave us the “a god” translation in John 1:1, that same rule should be applied equally in every case, should it not? But then we end up with a boatload of nonsense. How does John 1:12 read under the NWT rule?:

Joh 1:12 But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of [a god], even to them that believe on his name: ???

Sounds positively Mormon to me. Or verse 13?

Joh 1:13 Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but [a god]???

Or verse 18?

Joh 1:18 No man hath seen [a god] at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.???

Do you get the point? The NWT rule is utter nonsense, perpetrated on well-meaning people who haven’t a clue how Greek works and willing to believe what other people who haven’t a clue about how Greek works tell them how it should be. It’s a Greek tragedy. All the good verses die.

Well what’s left then, if not definite, and not indefinite? Ah, but we are not dealing with a strictly binary system here. This is Greek, home to some of the brightest minds in human history, and it has other possibilities.

In particular, when neither the definite nor the indefinite article applies, we are no longer talking strictly about objects, but have entered the realm of categories or classes of things. Thus, “theos” is metadata about Jesus. It describes the class of things he belongs to. Put another way, it is a qualitative assessment of who he is by his very nature. It asserts that he has the nature of God. That’s the class of beings to which he properly belongs, and as there is only one such being in that class by definition, the conclusion is irresistible. Jesus is God.

This is not rocket science. This is really what John said:

And the Word was !!!GOD!!!.

Conclusion:

Like you said, the word of God sometimes leads us to places we don’t expect and even places we don’t like. Here the word of God leads us to an unsolvable puzzle. How can God be one being, yet really three persons? It seems impossible. Yet there it is. Refute it if you can, but accept it if you cannot. Let God be true, but every man a liar.

Peace,