John 1:1
by James White
1.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was Deity.
(personal translation)
This verse provides the framework not only for
the prologue that encompasses verses one through eighteen, but for the entire
Gospel itself. The prologue functions, I believe, as an “interpretive window”
for the entire Gospel. John means us to read the rest of his work with the foundational
under-standing of the nature of Jesus Christ, as presented in these verses,
clearly in mind. It is just the rejection of the lofty teaching of these verses
that has caused the myriad of inconsistent and illogical interpretations of
the words of Jesus later in the Gospel.
1.1 takes us back beyond creation itself. Some
refer the “beginning” here to that of Genesis 1.1, and this may be so, but the
verb “was” (Gr: en, imperfect of eimi) takes us before whatever “beginning”
we may wish to choose. The continuous action in the past of the imperfect tense
of the verb indicates to us that whenever the “beginning” was, the Word was
already in existence. In other words, the Word is eternal - timeless - without
a “beginning.”
Note also the fact that John will very carefully
differentiate between the verbs “was” and “became” (Gr: egeneto, the aorist
form of ginomai). The reason for this, I believe, is that he wishes to emphasize
the eternal, non-created nature of the Logos over against the finite, temporal,
created nature of all other things. This will come sharply into view in 1.14.
Just why John chose to use the Greek term Logos
is a matter of quite some debate. The term had great meaning in Greek philosophy
as the impersonal but rational ordering principle of the universe. The Logos
is what made sense out of the universe. But John does not use Logos in just
this way - in fact, he radically alters the use of the word while still maintaining
some of the inherent meaning it would have for his readers. The Logos of John
is personal - the Logos is not just an ordering principle but rather a personal
being. As John’s explanation of the Logos unfolds, we shall see that the Logos
makes God known and is, in fact, incarnated in Jesus Christ. For John, then,
Jesus Christ is the revelation of God in the flesh (1.14) but He did not start
revealing God at that time - instead, His relationship to God the Father (1.18)
has always been one of revelation - the Logos always makes God known for it
is the Father’s gracious choice to be revealed by the Word. This will be important
as well in seeing that John clearly identifies Jesus Christ as YHWH in different
ways - sometimes through the usage of the phrase “I Am” (Gr: ego eimi) and sometimes
by direct ascription, as in John 12.39-41/Isaiah 6.1.
“ ... and the Word was with God ...” The Apostle
John walks an exceptionally fine line in this verse. In the first clause he
asserts the eternality of the Logos. Now he states that the Logos is personally
eternal - that is, that the Logos has been in communion and communication with
God for eternity as well. The verb is the same as the first clause, and the
preposition pros (“with”) pictures for us face-to-face communication. John does
not yet identify these persons for us - we must wait till verses 14 through
18 to see that John is speaking of Jesus Christ the Son and God the Father.
What he wishes to emphasize here is the personal existence of the Logos in some
sense of distinction from “God” (i.e., the Father). The Logos is not the Father
nor vice-versa - there are two persons under discussion here.
The third clause of this verse has occasioned
great debate and controversy, mainly due to the fact that the Greek word for
God, theos, does not have the definite article (“the”) before it. Some pseudo-Christian
or Arian groups have said that this means that the Word was a “god” or a god-like
being like an angel (Jehovah’s Witnesses). But is this the case?
Actually, the answer to the whole question seems
fairly obvious, even to a first-year Greek student. The third clause of 1.1
is a copulative sentence - that is, it follows the form “The (noun) is (predicate
nominative)”. In Greek, one distinguishes the subject of a copulative sentence
by which noun has an article in front of it. For example, in 1 John 4:8 we have
the last clause reading “God is love.” Now, in Greek this is ho theos agape
estin. There are two nominative nouns in this sentence - God (theos) and love
(agape). However, the first noun, God, has the article ho before it. This indicates
that “God” is the subject of the sentence, and love is the predicate nominative.
It would be wrong, then, to translate 1 John 4:8 as “Love is God.”
The only way to make the two nouns interchangeable
is to either put the article with both nouns, or to not put the article there
at all. As long as one has the article and the other does not, one is definitely
the subject and the other the predicate. Hence, 1 John 4:8 does not teach that
all love is God, nor that God and love are interchangeable things. Rather, the
term “love” tells us something about God - it functions almost as an adjective,
describing the noun (God) that it modifies.
We have the same situation in 1.1c. The Greek
reads, kai theos en ho logos. Notice that the term Logos has the article ho
while the term theos does not. This tells us that the subject of the clause
is the Logos. Hence, we could not translate the phrase “and God was the Word”
for that would make the wrong term the subject of the clause. Hence, the term
“God” is the predicate nominative, and it functions just as “love” did in 1
John 4:8 - it tells us something about the Logos - and that is, that the nature
of the Logos is the nature of God, just as the nature of God in 1 John 4:8 was
that of love.
Now, John does emphasize the term “God” by placing
it first in the clause - this is not just a “divine nature” as in something
like the angels have - rather, it is truly the nature of Deity that is in view
here (hence my translation as “Deity”). Dr. Kenneth Wuest, long time professor
of Greek at Moody Bible Institute rendered the phrase, “And the Word was as
to His essence absolute Deity.”
Before summing up the verse, then, let the reader
note that when groups such as Jehovah’s Witnesses quote from Dr. Philip Harner’s
article on the nature of anarthrous (=without the article) predicate nominatives,
they don’t understand what they are talking about. Harner accurately pointed
out that the anarthrous predicate nominative functions as a descriptive term
rather than a specific or definite term. Problem is, the Jehovah’s Witnesses
make “God” in John 1.1 just as definite as the translations they attack!
Rendering it “a god” misses the whole point
- the word “God” is functioning to describe the Logos - translating it as “a
god” means a definite god is in mind, rather than following the actual sense
of Harner’s article and making the term describe the being of the Logos. The
point Harner is making is that it is not the definite “God” that is in view,
far less the JW translation of “a god” (both are definite) but rather the nature
of the Logos that is important.
Hence, 1.1 tells us some immensely important
things. First, we see that the Logos is eternal, uncreated. Secondly, we see
that there are two Divine Persons in view in John’s mind - the Father and the
Logos. Thirdly, there is eternal communication and relationship between the
Father and the Logos. Finally, we see that the Logos shares the nature of God.
These items will be important for a proper understanding of many of the statements
made by our Lord in this book. It seems to me that John felt it was vitally
important that we understand the majesty of the Person of Jesus Christ right
from the start. We cab see these concepts played out through the rest of the
Gospel of John.
[Above article written by James White, available
for download in the file JWSTUFF.ZIP from Pros Apologian, (602) 973-3739, 1:114/105]
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