When 'arche' is a personal title

This is about Rev 3:14, and how to translate the Greek word 'arche' here, which here refers to Jesus, who is titled

‘the Amen, the Witness, the Faithful and True One, the [arche] of the creation of God’.

As I often say, meaning resides in function and context, and the place of grammar in translation should be treated in that context. Among a number of contextual features, particularly striking is the parallelism with an earlier verse, similarly about Jesus:

Rev 1:5:

‘the Witness, the Faithful One, the Firstborn of the Dead, and the Ruler [archwn] of the kings of the earth’ 

Rev 3:14:

‘the Amen, the Witness, the Faithful and True One, the Ruler [arche] of the creation (or kingdom - see below) of God’ 

The parallelism in the two verses will be our primary guide, because the book obviously intends that when you hear 3:14, your mind goes straight back to 1:5. The parallel words 'archwn' and 'arche' both naturally bear the weight of a similar meaning, which leads to the joint meaning of "ruler" in these lists of titles of Jesus. Arche has other frequently used meanings, which I'll come to, but those other meanings operate where the author hasn't structured this striking parallel! 

In 1:5, it's uncontroversial to produce the translation "Ruler of the kings of the earth." The parallel phrase in 3:14 needs more thought. 

Debate about translating 'arche' is frequently rehearsed and I'll come to that. But first, a clue ought to be recorded. It's the word translated as creation. It has been suggested that κτίσεως as 'creation' is a misunderstanding of the author's intentions. That is, κτίσεως can mean a system of authority, according to BDAG 572–573. In other words, I suggest, what we have is another form of "Ruler of the kingdom of God." 

Given κτίσεως being a system of authority, we can see all the more easily the parallel:

ὁ ἄρχων τῶν βασιλέων τῆς γῆς

ἡ ἀρχὴ    τῆς κτίσεως τοῦ Θεοῦ

Context: The Amen

There is another interpretative assistance close to hand. As we saw in Revelation 3:14, Jesus also bears the title of the 'Amen':

‘the Amen, the Witness, the Faithful and True One, the Ruler of the creation/regime of God’.

In the Old Testament, when 'Amen' is used as a personal title, there is only one being who bears the title. It is of course Yahweh, the uncreated God (Isaiah 65:16). It is a title of God. It is therefore highly significant that it's Jesus' title in Revelation. 

This is part of the pattern in Revelation of ascribing to Jesus things that uniquely belong to Yahweh in the Old Testament. This title stands apart from other titles that can be applied to other beings. In other words, Jesus is identified with Yahweh, and is ruler over the kingdom of God.

Of course, words can be used with overtones of meaning. Words don't have to be binary in the hands of skilful writers, meaning either only one thing or the other. If κτίσεως gives us 'regime/kingdom,' it may still retain the overtone of 'creation.' Roger Forster's reading of the Amen is instructive here. 

"This almost certainly comes from Isaiah 65:15-17... Amen is clearly used as a name for God." The title being: the God of Amen. 

Using the 'creation' meaning for κτίσεως, Forster writes: "the context is 'The God of 'Amen' in Isaiah 65, which continues,' I create a new heaven and a new earth' (v17) - we are not looking backwards but forwards to the New Creation. God is doing something totally new, and Jesus, rising from the grave, is the head of this New Creation... So this is a wonderful, glorious statement: the Kingdom of God has arrived...'

(Roger Forster, Revelation: A Commentary for Our Time Part 1, Push Publishing, 2022. 171-72)

Forster translates the last title of Jesus then as "The Beginning of the creation of God" meaning that the resurrection has begun the New Creation. The meaning is forward-looking. Richard Bauckham disagrees with this line of interpretation. For him, the verse is looking back to the Genesis creation (translating 'the origin (arche) of God's creation') and with ‘arche’ as ‘origin/beginning’ meant to link it to God the Father and Jesus being titled "the Beginning and the End" in Rev 21:6-7 (the Father) and 22:12-13 (Jesus, obvious but made even clearer with v. 20). This link to the title 'The Beginning and The End' should be fairly obvious. Jesus as the source of creation is Bauckham's reading.

(Richard Bauckham, The Theology of the Book of Revelation, Cambridge University Press, 1993)

In summary, my preference is led by how Revelation 3:14 corresponds to Revelation 1:5: 

Rev 1:5:

‘the Witness, the Faithful One, the Firstborn of the Dead, and the Ruler [archwn] of the kings of the earth’ (ὁ ἄρχων τῶν βασιλέων τῆς γῆς)

Rev 3:14:

‘the Amen, the Witness, the Faithful and True One, the Ruler [arche] of the kingdom of God’ (ἡ ἀρχὴ τῆς κτίσεως τοῦ Θεοῦ)

Controversy

I am satisfied that this is the sensible choice of credible interpretations. However. when I first wrote about 3:14, it was because I saw anti-Trinitarians try to press the construction of the text to classify Jesus as a 'created' being, and not eternal. I have to say, giving Jesus the title "the Amen" would be a very strange way of trying to signal a 'created' being. 

 

It’s obvious that these words are all personal titles, and the degree of parallel between the verses is obvious too. It would be inconsistent, and would break the purpose of the sequence of titles, to suddenly mean that Jesus was a 'created' being as if that were what the passage is about. 

For anti-Trinitarians, this really turns on use of the word 'arche,' priming it by translating it as 'the beginning,' and then interpreting this to mean that Jesus was the first piece of creation made. The first jigsaw piece of all the stuff made, so to speak. I see little or nothing in the passage to commend this reading. Needless to say, in the New Testament, Jesus isn't the first piece of creation. Jesus "laid the foundation of the earth in the beginning" rather than being the beginning piece himself (Hebrews 1:10). Rather than being the beginning piece, he "was" already (past tense - John 1:1) with God in the beginning, as St Basil the Great pointed out in his On the Holy Spirit.

The word 'beginning' has worked just fine for Trinitarians and anti-Trinitarians alike, but the forced interpretation of 'created being' is anti-Trinitarian. 

However, I'll just say a little more about translating arche as “ruler”, which I believe is a better translation in the context of these parallel verses. 

Context: it's a person

'Arche' can apply to prominent persons as ruler or leader, but that doesn't go for when it refers to things:

• When a prominent person is in view, translating arche as ‘ruler’ or 'rule' is within usage in translation (e.g. Luke 20:20 - τῇ ἀρχῇ καὶ τῇ ἐξουσίᾳ τοῦ ἡγεμόνος)
• When a person is not in view, but some other kind of object is in view, ‘beginning’ is common usage in translation (e.g. Mark 13:8 - ἀρχὴ ὠδίνων)

This is a factor regardless of the genitive construction found, the genitive which some anti-Trinitarians find more fascinating here. 

So, for example, where arche is applied to persons, the context is not unusually one of power and authority. Not related to the start of something. Hence, "ruler" fits. One can see similar with the closely related word ἀρχὴν in 1 Corinthians 15:24 and Jude 1:6 meaning 'domain' (whereas in other places it means 'beginning'). There are other examples where arche doesn't at all mean 'first created thing.' Prior to the New Testament, in philosophy, the Greek "arche" was the eternal archetype on which all created things are based according to BDAG 137-38. Note also Josephus' Antiquities 4:220 - αἱ ἀρχαὶ τῶν πόλεων - meaning leaders of cities. So all these things were around for Hellenised peoples, such as those highly educated ones reading and writing books in fluent Greek. Such as John.

In Revelation 3:14, arche is indeed the title of a person, and hence "ruler" fits. It's a string of titles:

‘the Amen, the Witness, the Faithful and True One, the Ruler of the creation/regime of God’.

In English translations, it's exceedingly rare for arche to mean any person having ‘The Beginning’ as a personal title. 

As said, in Revelation we have the title 'The Beginning and the End' including the Greek word arche, a title applied to both the Father (21:6-7) and the Son. So, although some anti-Trinitarians think that arche makes the Son a part of creation by way of being called (in that translation tradition) "the beginning of creation," that would be unjustifiably inconsistent. Indeed, the 'arche' language no more makes the Father a part of creation than it does the Son. So it's not a wide open gateway to being classified as 'created.'

In summary, the informative parallelism of 3:14 with 1:5, the pattern of personal titles in both verses, and the context of a prominent person, is the combination that supports ‘ruler’ in translation. But that is not to rule out 'beginning' as an overtone.

On having a god: it's a relational thing

 

Having a god is a relational thing. People have their gods. To an adoring man, a woman can be a goddess – this is not healthy, and probably unwelcome to the woman! To football fans, the “star” who lifts their team to the “heights” may very well be a “god” to them. I’ve seen it. Anthropologists have written about it. There are even academic papers about the close similarities between football and religion. Gods are all the things we worship, be they earthly figures or heavenly figures. It’s relational.

Our language is full of signposts to it. If people comment on someone else’s romantic relationship like this – “she worships the ground he walks on” – we know this is a relationship at an early immature stage, and the girl/woman needs to stop “putting him on a pedestal.” That is to say, she needs to stop treating him like a god. Gods on pedestals are a thing.

The Bible is critical of ancient peoples who built models of the things they worshipped and fixed their models on top of pedestals to raise them higher up for all to see. And for all to worship. The Greeks did such. The Romans did such. These gods on pedestals were not necessarily heavenly beings. Having a god, remember, is a relational thing, not a matter of where the god is found. But they liked to keep their gods close.

Some say it’s human nature to metaphorically put people on a pedestal. As a football fan myself in the 1980s, I well recall a team manager who “saved” the club from decline and “performed a miracle” un raising the team to the “heights” of success. The fans loved him, really loved him, to his dying day. From the heart, they adored the man who had given the gift of a footballing lifetime to them, dignity and worth as fans of a most successful club. He was, and though dead still is, an idol to them with an undying love. Lesser “servants” of the club are “not worthy” to be compared with him. I am not exaggerating the devotion.

He was “just” a man walking the earth, but he was loved as much as any God in heaven for many of them. In no-one’s eyes was he a heavenly being. He didn’t need that attribute to be a god to them. Having a god is a relational thing, Being a god is a relational thing.

I won’t talk about all the ways in which football is like a religion, with its many cultic (in the academic sense) features. Others have done that amply.

So fans and their idols is a thing. An idol is something you worship. Photographs of “teen idols” adorn the walls of many a young person’s bedroom. That’s just a teen phase you pass through! But the language is apt: teen idols are worshipped a little bit. Sometimes more than a little bit.

The Bible contrasts idols with the “true God” who should be worshipped. But that doesn’t disallow teenagers the right to go through a rite of passage! To some adults – and children – their favourite television programme is said to be “his whole life.” This is more true of science-fiction fans devoted to a television series or a film franchise with lots of content to absorb, where their time and money is consumed by their love of that show. Effectively, their idol has eaten their time and their money. Curiously, this resembles another pattern. I refer to religions where worshippers lay edible food at the pedestals on which their models of gods sit/stand, as if to nourish their gods. (Of course, what it’s doing is nourishing their devotion to their gods, the object of their devotion.)

In summary, someone’s god, the object of their devotion, can actually be here on earth – a “star” of music or sport or TV – or in heaven. What makes anything a god to someone is our relational attitude to it. The Bible says that the object of worship will be a created thing or the Creator, and it approves only worshipping the Creator. It talks of those for whom that relational attitude to the Creator is lacking, and who instead tend towards worshipping created things. Thus, “they turn to other gods.” Or “their god is their own stomach,” and so on.

So by definition, having a god is not a matter of a contrast between the god being a heavenly being and you being an earthly being. It’s not about where you are. It’s a matter of the heart.

It’s a relational thing, not an ontological thing per se. Being ‘a god’ to someone doesn’t of itself tell us if their god is a supernatural being or a human being. That’s something we have to find out from more information.

So, that was a very long-winded way of introducing my subject, that Jesus on earth spoke of having a god.

 

Jesus having a God

So what relational thing is this? It’s in the context first of a Son to his Father, but it’s not this that tells us the Father is a supernatural being – that is just taught anyway. (In fact, the gospels present both Father and Son as supernaturally able, so that doesn’t divide them.)

The second context is created human form to Creator. Something about being the flesh and blood Son in Galilee made it appropriate that his relationship with his Father was one of worship. Why was this needed?

In Christian terms, to have God at the centre is to have your worship oriented in the right direction. Relationally, Christian worship is directed towards the Creator, rather than to created things. It’s because God is Creator (I’ll say more), not because God is supernatural (other things are too), and not because God is in heaven (other things are there too). Of course, God being in heaven signposts us towards God’s ultimate status. And God’s being supernatural signposts us towards God’s ability to create the universe. But these signposts don’t tell the whole story.

It’s because God is Creator and Ruler of all things, and ultimate source of all good, that is why we worship God. That defines the relationship. It’s still a relational thing.

What we worship isn’t to be decided simply by what our hearts like. In Christian worship, we find in God the thing that most truly warrants that place in our hearts.  

So, back to this: something about the flesh and blood Son in Galilee made it appropriate that his relationship to his Father is one or worship. And it can be only that the Son took upon himself the life of created things. This, vitally, gave the Son the power to re-set humanity’s right relationship to the Father. By virtue of the mould he has made, we can be fitted into that mould, conformed to the likeness of the Son. This way, our relationship to the Creator is put back into shape. That’s why Jesus of Galilee says he has a God. It’s to perform the great re-set of humanity, to re-set history and the human race.

So having a god is relational. In itself, it doesn’t tell us that one being must be supernatural and another not. Having a god is not intrinsically ontological. It’s having one’s heart oriented in worship to the right person.

Jesus’ heart was always in the right place, turned towards the Father. That was true before he came to earth. It was still true while on earth, with the added dimension of being in human form, performing the great human re-set, having a God in his heart, so that we can too, facing the right way. It’s love with an extra dimension. That’s what it is for Jesus to have a God. Once this is understood, we begin to appreciate Christian worship more deeply, and why Christian worship to God is through Jesus, the Great Re-set man himself.

And as we observe Jesus, the very image of God, we realise what God has been like all along, the very best of all, adored by hearts that have been re-set. Now we understand truly what it is to have a God. If the eternal Son who is in the bosom of the eternal Father (John 1) had not come down from heaven and “dwelt among us,” none of this would be possible. We are simply caught up in a Trinitarian embrace.

He who truly loved the Father from the beginning cam down so we could truly love the Father. He had to have a God in terms of the Father in order to re-set us towards the Father. It’s a relational thing from start to finish.

If this seems in some ways paradoxical, I’ve written a post about that here.

 

Footnote

On a slightly down note, the joy and life of this can be missed by wrong assumptions. It’s the mistaken assumption that if Jesus ‘has a God,’ then this tells us that the divine being excludes anyone such as Jesus. Underlying that is an assumption that God like us is uni-personal. But here's my starting point. You and I are not like the being of God. You and I, as a human being, might think of oneself as a private individual. And that's because of what you and I are. But the divine being is different from you and I, eternal, omniscient, existing before and beyond creation. Obviously, just because we are none of those things doesn't mean God has to be none of those things. i.e. Just because we are singular individual persons does not mean the divine being has to be a singular person. Unless one wants to imagine God in a very anthropocentric way. Start with: the divine being is not like us. We stop dictating what the divine being can be. And then we start to observe how different and unusual the divine being of Scripture is. An open mind will see the divine being doesn't have to be like us and can be multi-personal. The flesh and blood Son having a God is a relational thing which a human Jesus had to fulfil, not an ontological thing. When we have a relational theology, we are freer to observe God, and see that the divine nature is quite unlike us.