Are Jehovah's Witnesses correct to translate John 1:1c as "...the Word was a god"?

Far from being trivial matters of peripheral doctrine, Jehovah's Witnesses have maintained (and continue to maintain) that John 1:1 ought to properly read as "In [the] beginning the Word was, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a god" (New World Translation; Emphasis mine). Such an interpretation provides two possible views. (i) Jesus merely possesses divine qualities; or (ii) Jesus is a secondary, subordinate deity (a demigod of some sort). Now Jehovah's Witnesses as well as Evangelicals both assert monotheism as the most plausible biblical view. This is confirmed by various biblical passages where Jehovah God is said to be the only God in existence. Isaiah 43:10 records God saying, "Before me there was no God formed, and after me there continued to be none" (NWT). Isaiah 44:6 states, "I am the first and I am the last, and besides me there is no God." The Hebrew shema is clear as to the quantity of deities when it states, "Listen, O Israel: Jehovah our God is one Jehovah" (Deuteronomy 6:4). The New Testament also affirms unequivocally that there is only one God. 1 Corinthians 8:4 tells us that "there is no God but one" and Galatians 3:20 states that "God is only one." Any speculative claims about there being more than one God are unquestionably unbiblical. But what about thesis (i)?

Although many interesting discussions arise during analyses of "In the beginning the Word was" and "the Word was with God," our primary focus will be on the controversial "the Word was a god" bolstered by alleged scholars of the Watchtower. The Greek text on John 1:1c reads:

"kai theos en ho logos"

The permission of the "a god" translation stems from the fact that theos is anarthrous, or without the definite article "the." This has led, purely on an isolated and removed perspective, the NWT translators to supply "a god" for the nonarticular theos present in the text. But we are not asking if this translation is permitted for the isolated instance of theos, but rather if the translation is warranted by the contextual "kai theos en ho logos." In support of a scholarly answer to this, we have to conclude that it is not for seven reasons. (1) We are already aware of the passages that vindicate the deity of Jesus Christ (John 20:28; Colossians 2:9; Titus 2:13) and the passages that stipulate that there is only one God (Isaiah 43:10; 44:6; 1 Corinthians 8:4) and, as such, demand that we interpret John 1:1c as "The Word was God" given that "a god" implies more than one God. (2) Qualitative understandings about a subject's ontological stature (i.e. the nature of the thing being described) preclude the debate of anarthrous versus arthrous from being a significantly relevant factor. Just like it is irrelevant whether or not terms like "a woman" have any articular connotation since "Sue was a woman" and "Sue was the woman" both indicate that Sue can be described as having all the attributes that a woman would have under normal and unstipulated circumstances. It is in the latter case that we are given more information, namely that Sue was the woman to which a reference has been made. But this distinction is immaterial. (3) John 1:1c may be, at worst, placed in the ranks of qualitatively indefinite nouns and one may still maintain that theos refers to a description of ontology just like other qualitatively indefinite nouns as "love" (cf. 1 John 4:8), "life" (cf. John 6:63), "spirit" (cf. John 4:24), and "flesh" (cf. John 1:14; 3:6). So the construction of, for example, "God is spirit" cannot mean anything but that God's nature is incorporeal and unextended in time and space. (4) In instances where the nonarticular, or anarthrous, predicate nominative theos precedes the linking (or copular) verb, it is clear that each instance demands that the God is the one alluded to. These instances include Mark 12:27, Luke 20:38, John 8:54, Philippians 2:13, and Hebrews 11:16. The conclusion here is inescapable. (5) According to various scholars on Greek grammar and construction, we are informed quite unanimously that John 1:1c is a direct reference to Jesus' deity. (a) E. C. Colwell maintains that "Predicate nominatives in relative clauses regularly follow the verb whether or not they have the article" and that "Definite predicate nouns which precede the verb usually lack the article."⁽¹⁾

Given this information and the construction of John 1:1c, it follows that such a rule applies and determines that "the Word was the God" is the proper rendition of the text. (b) Philip B. Harner, often misquoted by Jehovah's Witnesses as supporting the "a god" interpretation, reveals that Jesus is definitely God in John 1:1c.

Perhaps the clause could be translated, "the Word had the same

nature as God." This would be one way of representing John's

thought, which is, as I understand it, that ho logos, no less than

ho theos, had the nature of theos.⁽²⁾

Harner's analysis concludes that Jesus is no less than the same theos with whom He is said to be with. (c) William Barclay noted in a letter to the Watchtower organization in response to a misrepresented quotation from him that "What I was meaning to say, as you well know, is that Jesus is not the same as God, to put it more crudely, that he is of the same stuff as God, that is of the same being as God."⁽³⁾

End Notes

1. E. C. Colwell, "A Definite Rule for the Use of the Article in the Greek New Testament," Journal of Biblical Literature 52 (1933), p. 20.

2. Philip B. Harner, "Qualitative Anarthrous Predicate Nouns: Mark 15:39 and John 1:1," Journal of Biblical Literature 92, 1 (March 1973), p. 87.

3. Letter from William Barclay to Donald P. Shoemaker, August 26, 1977.