A bit of a niche title for a post, so I understand this isn't for everyone! It's about dialogue with Jehovah's Witnesses about John 1:1 again.
Some Jehovah’s Witnesses like defending their translation of
John 1:1 – defending their claim that Jesus is inferior to ‘THE’ God by being
‘a god.’ And sometimes, they like to start talking about the grammar of
indefinite nouns. This is all just to maintain their version of John 1:1: “and
the Word was a god.”
I’ve already done another post giving the case for a ‘qualitative’ reading in which Jesus is identified with God. And for the purposes of this post, I'm not going to pose the obvious question that may always be asked when reading "with God... was a god" - the obvious question being, how many gods in total may be counted there? And why is that a problem?
But to the subject. In this post, I want to explain why the claim that Jesus is ‘a god’ is self-defeating.
In so doing, the key question I intend to answer in this
post is this: is the qualitative noun here also indefinite? i.e. is it
qualitative-indefinite?
I have had some strangely circular conversations on this
with some Jehovah’s Witnesses. If I challenge them that 'a god' is not the most
likely translation of John 1:1, their rebuttal is saying their translation must
be right because Jesus is in a class of gods, as a god. But if you challenge
them that there is no reason to think that Jesus is in a class of gods, they
rebut this by saying they must be right because John 1:1 says 'a god'. And if
you challenge them that 'a god' is not the most likely... And round and round
in a very circular argument. So let’s break out of that loop with a bit of
analysis.
So Jehovah's Witnesses reach for the flimsier argument that John uses the word "the" on the first occasion and not the second. Thus: "the god... god." That is, "the deity... deity." You get the drift. So let's turn to that.
Indefinite?
Does an indefinite reading hold water? Is it ‘a god’ rather than 'god'? If you're familiar with this subject, you won't mind hopefully if I skip a long introduction!
Here’s the thing. Trying to make Jesus ‘a god’ is to put him
in a wider class of things. But that makes no sense in John 1:1. What class of gods
can someone be in at a time before there are other gods?
‘The Word’ is not ascribed membership in a class of gods
before the creation of the cosmos. That just doesn’t work.
In short, does the context of John put Jesus in a class of gods?
No., John is telling a story, starting in the beginning, introducing God and
his Word, and telling us what they did next, i.e. creation. This tightly fitted
story sequence is significant for the issues under discussion.
Maybe that’s easier to understand if I lay it out in the sequence of John’s story:
“In the beginning...”
What is the problem with putting Jesus in a class of gods at
this “beginning” moment in time? Answer: Jesus hadn’t made any ‘gods’ yet.
Putting Jesus in such a class at the point in the story puts John’s sequence
out of joint.
So, was Jesus in a class of beings who didn’t exist? It’s a
question that gives you the answer – no.
The Jehovah’s Witness reading of John 1:1-3 unwittingly
requires telling the story out of sequence, like this. We need a Tardis to keep
track of it:
i) first, in the beginning, the
Word was with God. So far so good.
ii) but then they leap forward in
time, to some moment after a class of gods has been created by Jesus, just so
they can put Jesus in this class of gods he has just made.
iii) But then they have to leap
back in time to “in the beginning”, to say that Jesus was ‘in the beginning”
with God an created everything.
iv) So then they go forward in time again from
the beginning to say that now Jesus created everything.
That’s a mess of a sequence and the mess is not John’s or
mine. The JWs have unwittingly inserted an artificial interruption into the
story sequence to introduce a moment where a class of gods exists, so that they
can put their Jesus into that class of beings, and then backtrack. In John’s
sequence that class of beings hadn’t been made yet, and his prologue doesn’t
even bother to explain that anyone else is in this class of gods.
The story starts ‘in the beginning’. The verse could not be
saying that Jesus was ‘a god’ in the way suggested by JWs.
In fact, the only kind of ‘theos’ that has been introduced
in the prologue is ‘ho theos’ (God) and that is the class to which this ‘theos’
(the Word - Jesus) can feasibly belong in the prologue. There’s no other theos
mentioned there.
Conclusion
So, despite what some Jehovah’s Witnesses want, Jesus was
not in a non-existent group-membership with beings he hadn’t yet created. That
is excluded by John, by his story-context, and by the intelligent pairing of
‘theos’ with ‘ho theos’ as described above. So ‘theos’ is not indefinite. It is
not ‘a god.’
Qualitative-indefinite?
What about those Jehovah’s Witnesses who use the term
‘qualitative-indefinite’ to rescue their use of the word ‘indefinite’?
Well, that still doesn’t work contextually for the same
reason as already given – The Word – Jesus – can’t have been a class of things
that didn’t exist.
So, to assert that the Word was ‘a’ (indefinite) god in a
class of gods - because (they claim) the context is that of a class of gods to
which the Word belongs as ‘a god’ – fails, whether they use the term
‘indefinite’ or ‘qualitative-indefinite.’
This is really just a way of squeezing the ‘indefinite’ in,
as Jehovah’s Witnesses like to do here. As I’ve argued elsewhere, it’s
qualitative. It’s not indefinite, and you can’t squeeze the indefinite in
here by making it
qualitative-indefinite.
Grammatical grounds do not necessitate a
qualitative-indefinite reading. Not at all. Frankly, I, surprised I haven't yet heard an appeal for 'a god' to be quantitative-
Conclusion
In answer to our question then – is the noun here
qualitative and also indefinite? We can say no. In correctly identifying
‘theos’ as qualitative, ‘theos’ is not moved any nearer to being an indefinite
noun at all. And 'a god' is self-defeating because it puts the Word in a class of beings that didn't exist.
So the second conclusion is the same as the first. Ion
context, there is nothing compelling about their idea that ‘The Word’ was in a
different inferior class of divinity to ‘The Deity’. If some people want to
believe there is such a different class in this verse, that is a matter of
belief for them, but they would be wrong to say that anything about the context
or the grammar of John 1:1 compels them to see it that way. They are simply
following their faith, which is their prerogative.
To reframe the conclusion. The meaning of John 1:1 is right
before us: ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with [the] God and
the Word was God.’
The second use of ‘God’ has qualitative force. If we want to
make the qualitative force more explicit in John 1:1, then we can express the
same idea (‘the Word was God’) the way that the REB does: “what God was, the
Word was.” John is identifying God and the Word as sharing fundamental sameness. That's the qualitative force. In terms of quality, they are in the same class of theos.
If the Word possesses the same qualities as a unique God, then the Word is within the identity of that God.
In contrast, it's not remotely as if John 1:1 is saying "in the beginning there were two classes of gods."
Appendix: indefinite article
This rather nice summary is taken from:
https://www.msu.edu/~abbottb/def&inde.pdf (link broken sadly)
When used in its most basic way
as an individuating factor, the indefinite article locates its noun's identity
in class membership rather than in unique properties of the individual. So
unlimited qualities of the group are invoked, but no individualizing
properties. The only individuating factor is the indefinite article itself,
which separates an individual from a mass concept. And this individuation is
only of number and not of quality. In this usage, the indefinite article posits
qualities only in membership, and individuation only in number.
To speak of 'a dog' only
distinguishes it from the dog-world by indicating that it is 'one dog'. Apart
from number, no individuating qualities are indicated. It could have any name,
any owner, any colour, it could be any species of dog (and it may be like or
unlie other dogs but we simply haven't been told). To speak of 'a dog' is a
very one-dimensional description, giving little scope to consider its dogginess
further. It is a picture lacking much definition. That is why the word
'indefinite' is used.
In contrast to 'a dog', to speak
of 'the dog' hints that we know something more, perhaps its name or its owner,
or some other individuating quality that gives it more definition, something
that makes the individual dog a bit more three-dimensional in our minds.
Obviously, the amount of
definition added merely by changing 'a dog' to 'the dog' is not great. In both
cases, we have identified one dog in the same class of species called dogs, so
not much difference there. The addition of this word 'the' hints that the
speaker is aware of something individual about the dog (such as its name or the
name of its owner). But this is only a hint of a greater degree of definition,
the picture is not filled out yet. We are relying on the speaker to tell us
something else to tell us what individuates this dog from any other dog, but we
are expecting him to expand on his distinction.
Nice summary there. So it should be clear that ‘theos’ is
not individuated from ‘ho theos’. So theos is not indefinite.
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