Replies

1. Rev 3:14,

You said:

“Or in keeping with the meaning of “arche” could read …”

But the broader context, which includes John 1:3 among others, does not allow a use of temporal beginning as with a created being, and so one of the other meanings must be chosen, unless you are willing to live with an outright contradiction in Scripture. That is not my view of how a God-breathed document works. God does not contradict himself. Rev 3:14 cannot be properly understood by arbitrarily separating it from the crystal clear meaning of John 1:1-3, to which we now return.

2. John 1:1

You appear to be taking the lack of a definite article as an inference of an indefinite object, yet you offered your own evidence that this is not the case, as your passage at John 4:19 demonstrates, and which is actually part of the point I was making. So I am confused as to why you would raise evidence against your own side. But that of course is up to you.

So now that you have essentially admitted that in Greek a definite article is not necessary to discuss a definite object, but usage is determined by context, you should have no problem seeing why AT Robertson and many others, and an overwhelming majority of translations, both old and new, have chosen the very reasonable rendering, “the Word was God.”

As for doubting whether God could be a member of a class, perhaps you are simply are unfamiliar with the Greek notion of being. In philosophy, we call it ontology, the “words about being.” The Greeks classified absolutely every kind of existing thing, even classes where there could only be one member. It is a mathematical way of thinking, and it runs rampant through the language and thought of ancient Greece.

So yes, God could be and definitely is in a class of beings, of which there is only one, by definition. That’s just how categories work. By leaving out the definite article, but moving theos into the emphatic position, he is precluding any possible misunderstanding of a multiplicity of gods, which would be anathema to his Hebrew mind anyway.

Instead, he uses the emphatic position combined with the lack of a concretizing article to describe an abstraction, a category of being called God, which perfectly describes who Jesus is in his own being. Hence the Nicene talk of substance. Not physical matter as we are used to understanding it, but a unique nature, the highest order of being possible, God.

3. John 1:3, Again

As for John 1:3, you have not quoted the text accurately, and your error makes all the difference. What Greek manuscript base are you using? Both the Byzantine and the Westscott-Hort agree here. There is no dispute as to the base text, and it is absolutely not what you recite here:

Your inaccurate rendition:

“All things came into being through him” (the Logos is an agent of creation as all things were through (dia) him.) “and without him not one thing came into being”

The actual text, first in Greek, so you don’t miss anything:

Panta di autou egeneto kai xoris autou egeneto oude ev ho gegonen

Broken down, this is what you have to deal with:

Panta —> All things
di —> by means of
autou —> him
egeneto —> were created
kai —> and
xoris —> without
autou —> him
egeneto —> was created
oude —> not even
ev —> one
ho gegonen —> created thing.

Do you see what you are missing? Not even one *created* thing was created apart from him. Not your oversimplification of “all things,” which you require for your theory of exception to work.

I have to admit, I read these lines of your post several times over trying to understand your logic and how it went wrong. I think I figured it out. As I’ve said, you need to have an implied exception, or you end up with an uncreated Logos, which you apparently do not want.

So the question is how to get there from here, because the words as they are will not support your implied exception. The class of all *created* things, which is what the verse actually describes, if it were allowed to stand, is smaller than the set of all things, and you would lose your implied exception.

Therefore, to make the set so big that an exception would necessarily be implied, the set has to be erroneously expanded to include both created and uncreated things, from which it would then and *only* then be possible to draw your implied exception.

Except the language of the text does not support this “creative” solution. The set of things being discussed is explicitly only all *created* things, not *absolutely* all things, as your rendering has it. John intentionally and explicitly excluded uncreated things, thus firmly denying any possibility of an implied exception for a “created creator.”

This whole misadventure gives me pause. I am curious to know from what text you derived your mangled reading. Again, no Greek manuscript of which I am aware excludes the final “gegonen” which you omitted. Can you explain to me how you managed to omit it?

Because every omission from the word of God is serious. God breathed each and every word for His own purposes. We may struggle with a translation here or there, and He understands our frailties in these matters, better than we do in fact. But He has also provided us with sufficient notice that He will not look kindly on either additions or deletions. Those are His word choices, and those are the words we have to deal with, one way or another.

Peace,

“You appear to be taking the lack of a definite article as an inference of an indefinite object, yet you offered your own evidence that this is not the case, as your passage at John 4:19 demonstrates, and which is actually part of the point I was making. So I am confused as to why you would raise evidence against your own side. But that of course is up to you”

John 4:19 has no article in Greek so the translator can supply it in English which is exactly the situation in John 1:3) making “prophet” indefinite.
I'm sorry if I didn't make that clear.

“Your inaccurate rendition:

“All things came into being through him” (the Logos is an agent of creation as all things were through (dia) him.) “and without him not one thing came into being”

The words in ellipses are mine. The quotation is from The New Revised Standard Version that appears in the New Greek-English Interlinear New Testament, published by tthe United Bible Society. (p.s., They are trinitarians)

The NAB John 1:3, reads:

“All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be”.

It, then, is not my “inaccurate rendition” at all.

“This whole misadventure gives me pause. I am curious to know from what text you derived your mangled reading. Again, no Greek manuscript of which I am aware excludes the final “gegonen” which you omitted. Can you explain to me how you managed to omit it?”

I omitted nothing. I quoted a translation by a major Protestant body and now the approved translation for Catholics so if you want to call it a “mangled reading” take it up with their translators.

“But the broader context, which includes John 1:3 among others, does not allow a use of temporal beginning as with a created being, and so one of the other meanings must be chosen, unless you are willing to live with an outright contradiction in Scripture.”

This broader must include the way Paul described Christ, as he did at Col.1. and 1 Cor. 8:6.

If we use the trinitarian definition of God to analyze John 1:1-3 then we end up with defining the Logos as either the Father or as the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Part of that broader context was how the term God or god was used in the Scriptures making it wholly correct to call the Logos “a god” since even Moses was called such.

“Broken down, this is what you have to deal with:

Be aware the order of words in the Greek has little to do with the order when translated into English.