If he is omniscient, how come the Son of God has to receive a revelation in Rev 1:1?

A question you would rarely come across. I had only ever seen it in polemics by Jehovah's Witnesses against standard Christian beliefs. But recently, it has resurfaced in Muslim polemics against Christian beliefs. So there is a slim chance you might come across it.

Regular readers will be pleased to know a short answer will do!

The controversial suggestion is that the verse is a giveaway about omniscience. It isn't. It's about something else altogether - a scene set in heaven that is carefully staged for effect.

The basics: to understand what the first verse of the book of Revelation means, the best way to start is to read the rest of the book of Revelation. Here's a short summary. The book tells us a vision. In God's heaven, there is a scroll, a revelation scroll. So everyone wants to know what is written on it. In a quite spectacular scene, the shocking fact emerges that no-one on in heaven is worthy to even open God's scroll... except one. Who is that one? It's the Lamb of God. (That's Jesus to you and me.) So the Lamb takes God's scroll and opens it. And all manner of spectacular visions appear, images of traumas the world will endure. And the ultimate promise is that God and his Lamb (Jesus) will make everything right again, and make a brand new heaven and earth.

So, a key scene there is the scroll, the revelation scroll, full of secrets. The Lamb of God takes it to open it, as a demonstration to all the witnesses that only one is worthy to receive it. 

The witnesses need to see and hear it. That's the point of the book. It’s staged for their benefit. That's what Revelation 1:1 tells us:

"The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants the things that must soon take place." 

The revelation is in the scroll. It's the scroll that God gives to Jesus. The revelations in it are for the witnesses to hear. And the reason for staging this is made very clear: the Lamb takes God’s scroll simply in order to answer the question: “who is worthy to open it?” 

It’s a public demonstration of the Lamb’s status. God needs to give the scroll to the Lamb, so that the explanation is heard, the explanation for why only the Lamb is worthy. 

Otherwise, the scroll could just have been given directly to John or the angel. The verse again (in full):

"The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants the things that must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John..."

The scene is staged as a display of how great the Lamb is, not how inferior his knowledge. The idea that it could be about omniscience is a woeful mis-reading. It's one of the least effective attacks on Christian belief that I've seen. It’s doubtful that anyone would veer towards such a view unless they were motivated on some level to down-rate Jesus.

So that was the answer. Now let's enjoy the passages a bit more.

That opening verse is a synopsis of the scene to come.

 

That "revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave to him" occurs in chapter 5, which gives the following account of it. When it's given to him, it's simply a scroll.

(By the way, here you see something common in the book: the author hears one thing and sees another. He hears it's a lion, but when he looks, it's a lamb. The book does this a lot.)

Then I saw in the right hand of him who was seated on the throne a scroll written within and on the back, sealed with seven seals. And I saw a mighty angel proclaiming with a loud voice, “Who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals?” And no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or to look into it, and I began to weep loudly because no one was found worthy to open the scroll or to look into it. And one of the elders said to me, “Weep no more; behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.”

And between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain, with seven horns and with seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth. And he went and took the scroll from the right hand of him who was seated on the throne. And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb...

And the spectacular scene goes on. So there you have it. The revelation scroll is in God's right hand, and the Lamb takes it. Later when the Lamb opens it, its spectacular visions are witnessed by all. 

 And that's what Revelation 1:1 prefigures:

The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants the things that must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John...

It's pointless insisting it's about who is/isn't omniscient when it's really about the drama of the scene, the drama of who is worthy. I can't imagine that when John wrote this scene, that he would ever having imagined that people would try to turn this into an Omniscience Indicator! I suppose one of the problems the biblical writers face, like all writers, is that you can't write anything without people trying to make it into something else.

Feel free to suggest topics on early Christianity for future posts

If it's within my areas of study, I'll do my best to respond. 

Use the comment box below to suggest topics.

Cheers

Colin

John 8:58: what’s with the great ‘I am’?

John's gospel uses the absolute 'I am' (Greek = 'ego eimi') statements of Jesus schematically. One of them is John 8:58, but to understand it, we need to look wider. 

To understand why, we need to dip back into the Hebrew Bible.

 

Deuteronomy and Isaiah

Behind some of it is the Hebrew 'ni hu (= 'I am he'). This occurs seven times as God's declaration of his unique identity. Those seven times are in Deuteronomy 32:39, plus six in Isaiah at 41:4, 43:10, 43:13, 46:4, 48:12 and 52:6; plus the emphatic ‘anoki 'anoki hu occurs twice, both in Isaiah at 43:25 and 51:12.

So, nine verses: seven of 'I am he'; plus 2 emphatic ones. Those verses are key and well known statements of Jewish monotheism. John wrote his gospel with this in view.

And before we move on to the New Testament, we need to know that the Old Greek (Septuagint) sometimes translates 'ni hu' as 'ego eimi' (= 'I am').

 

John's Gospel

In his carefully structured gospel, John echoes that pattern in reference to Jesus. It’s an extraordinary move.

So, for Jesus, John includes seven absolute 'I am' statements, plus 2 emphatic verses. Here they are:

·       John's seven absolute 'I am' verses in his gospel are: John 4:26, 6:20, 8:24, 8:28, 8:58, 13:19, and 18:5.

·       Plus 18:5-8 which emphatically twice repeat the seventh occurrence.

 

Note what John is doing there. John’s message emerges in his own pattern. It’s about the parallels with those famous monotheistic verses from the Old Testament. So:

·       the Old Testament ‘I am he’ has 7 instances of 'ni hu' and 2 of the emphatic 'anoki 'anoki hu.’

·       John's ‘I am’ includes 7 absolute instances of 'ehgo eimi'... and 2 repetitions of the 7th for an emphatic climax.

Those verses thus very carefully and deliberately identify the ‘I am’ Jesus with the ‘I am he’ God of the Old Testament. It’s about Jesus' divinity. The aforementioned 7 + 2 uses of ‘ego eimi’ in John’s gospel match up with the 7 + 2 uses of ‘ni hu’ by God in the Old Testament.

John in this way reveals Jesus to be claiming the monotheistic divinity of the creator God here.

Whatever one may think about how best to convey John 8:58 in English translation, whether ‘I am’ or not, we must not miss John’s point.

The Greek is clear - this gospel’s 7 + 2 uses of the absolute ‘ego eimi’ parallel the 7 + 2 uses by God of ‘ni hu’ in these profoundly monotheistic passages.

 

A brilliant place to find out is the short book 'God Crucified' by Richard Bauckham. The same line of thinking is in Catrin Williams’ much more expensive book.

 

Exodus 3:14

Sometimes, commentators are keen to connect the ‘ego eimi’ of John 8:58 in particular with the Old Greek version of Exodus 3:14.

But it's not particularly Exodus 3:14 that is in view in this 'I am' statement. Instead the schematic way it is used shows that John has structured his gospel to link to the 7+2 verses of Deuteronomy and Isaiah listed above.

 

Conclusion

The Old Greek (Septuagint) sometimes translated ‘ni hu’ as ‘ego eimi’.

The 7 + 2 uses of ‘ni hu’ by God in the OT are clearly in view in John’s plan of his Greek-language gospel, and what is especially significant about them is that they all occur in profoundly monotheistic contexts. These are well known OT verses, and John’s carefully structured gospel clearly echoes the pattern. It does so by giving Jesus 7 absolute ‘ego eimi’ statements plus two emphatic follow-ons.

Therefore, John's Gospel echoes the monotheism of Deuteronomy and Isaiah, and makes the profoundly Christological step of including Jesus in the identity of the God of Jewish monotheism.

 

Notes

Observers of the Jehovah’s Witnesses comments on this verse might like to go to this collection of references to see how it has evolved over the years. It’s not my favourite website by any means, but it’s handy for having a lot of information contained in one place.

Father, Son and Spirit: are they 'co-eternal'?

This post is to show that Father, Son and Spirit are 'co-eternal.' As it says in the Athanasian Creed.

But some confusion arises from what 'eternal' even means in English, so I'm laying the ground below. And I have to start with two Bible words: aionion; and aidios.

 

What's in a word? - aionion

Below, we will see that Father, Son and Spirit are each described as 'aionion' in Scripture. So what does that Greek word mean?

It is an adjective based on a noun that means a period of time; often a defined period as in 'an age', but sometimes an undefined time. It's sometimes translated as 'everlasting.' (And in the YLT as 'age-during'.) So that's more or less what that word meant in those ancient times.

So that's a Greek word.

Long ago, Jerome translated the Bible from Greek into Latin (i.e. the Latin Vulgate Bible). Stay with me here. When he came to the word aionion, he rendered it by the Latin word aeternas. So Father, Son and Spirit are 'aeternas' in the Vulgate.

The Latin word aeternae gives us the English word eternity. And this English word does still carry the original meaning related to aevum ('age'), and that's usually when the indefinite article ('an eternity') is used with it. For example, when we say something like 'I spent AN eternity in that queue', meaning 'I spent an age in that queue.' We also see it in idioms such as calling romantic love 'eternal love' meaning 'everlasting love.' So you can see there is still a connection from the biblical meaning of the word to modern usage.

But since those early days, a lot of interest has developed in other concepts connected to the word 'eternal', especially from philosophy. For example, some English-speaking people read 'eternal' as meaning something philosophical. Going beyond the words of the creed, they take 'eternal' to mean something like 'outside of time.' This has a sound basis and I talk about it in another post. (By the way, some philosophers use 'eternal' to mean 'out of time,' while others use 'eternal' to mean limitless time.)

 

What's in a word? - aidios

Whether the philosophers' concept of eternity has any correlative in Scripture is another question. It is difficult to find it in the Hebrew Bible to be sure. Some say that God is eternal in the 'non-time' sense because of the word 'aidios' in Romans chapter 1, but only if it has much to do with what philosophers think of as 'eternal'.

One important thing about 'sidios' is that in Romans 1:20 this word is not used to directly describe God as eternal, but to describe God's power as eternal. According to the Bible this power is Jesus (1 Corinthians 1:24) - Jesus is the eternal power of God. This power is also associated with the coming of the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:8, Acts 10:38) because it is the power of the Holy Spirit too (Romans 15:13). 'Power' is also used as a substitute for the name of God directly (Mark 14:62). So the link with power and eternal power runs right through a Bible understanding of Father, Son and Spirit.

Let's look for example at what is said about Jesus,

 

 

Jesus

Jesus is 'everlasting' if you compare how the Greek of 1 John 1:1-2 deliberately parallels the description of Jesus in the gospel of John 1:1-2. Here's the parallel:

 

The epistle 1 John 1:1-2

... from the beginning.....the Word of life.......the life everlasting......was with the Father....

... ap arkes....................tou logou tes zoes.....ten zoen ten ainion......en pros ton patera ....

 

Gospel of John 1:1-2

....in the beginning.........was the Word..................and the Word.........was with God ...

....en arke........................en ho logos......................kai ho logos...........en pros ton theon ...

 

It is evident from the parallel that from the one called 'life everlasting' is in fact the same person called 'the Word'. The Word is know to be the person Jesus.

So, it is evident that the everlasting Word is Jesus. Note that the phrase 'in the beginning' was the available expression meaning the furthest back imaginable moment. From the beginning, the Word was everlasting.

So now let's look at Father, Son and Spirit together, to see how they could be co-eternal.

 

 

Father, Son and Spirit - eternal

So let's build up the picture of who is eternal from Scripture. On Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, and God the Father:

-               As seen, Jesus is described with the Greek word 'aionion' (1 John 1:2) - he was eternal 'from the beginning' (v.1). And Hebrews 1:2 adds that God 'made the ages through him.' Yes, 'the ages' ('tous aionas')! There was no such thing as ages until the 'ages' were made through Jesus. So Jesus did not come into being in any age. He made the ages. He is 'aionion', eternal.

 

-               The Holy Spirit is described using the word 'aionion' (Hebrews 9:14).

 

-               God: 'aioniou theou' (Romans 16:26), and we all recognise the Father as God.

 

It would be to ignore Scripture to deny that Father, Son and Spirit are 'aionion', i.e. the three are aionion.

They are co-eternal, which is saying something more. As the Trinity, they have a shared existence. It's a shared eternal existence. That's why the creed says they are co-eternal.

 

 

Co-eternal: where the word comes from

I mentioned that Jerome translated the Bible into Latin, and when he came to the Greek word aionion, he rendered it by the Latin word aeternas. So Father, Son and Spirit are aeternas in the Vulgate. Well, the Athanasian creed was written after Jerome, also in Latin:

'...tres personae coaeternae...'

In the light of the above, we can understand it meaning 'three co-everlasting persons'.

Back-translate it into Greek and - instead of three who are 'co-aeternae' - you get three who are effectively co... aionion. That's three co-everlasting persons. That is nicely in harmony with 1 John 1:2, Hebrews 9:14 and Romans 16:26.

By the way, more or less the same arguments apply to any discussion of the Latin 'aequalis' (and coaequalis) which is prone to be misunderstood if read simply as the word 'equal' of modern English.

 

 

Further reading:

http://www.christian-thinktank.com/finaltorah.html

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/quicumque.html

 

My book God in 3D: Finding the Trinity in the Bible and the Church Fathers discusses how the term co-eternal fits in the story of God's temple presence. See pages 196-97 for example.

Why "eternal generation of the Son"?

God exists outside of time. That’s according to the classical view of God. God is uncreated. God exists without reference to time and space. “In the beginning, God created.” So say the first words of the Bible. Time and space only came into existence because God willed it.

Outside of time and space is somewhere you can’t “go” to. God can “be” in that state, “there,” but you can’t “go” there, because only in time and space can you “go” anywhere.

Now, time and space are measurements between created things. And this all matters to better appreciate a Christian conception about Jesus. And this particular conception is called the "eternal generation of the Son." That’s the topic for this post. Spoilers: the 'proof' is at the end and it relates to John 1:1-3. Along the way, I'll touch on the science of physics and what it says about a time - a couple of things anyway. This will be my touchstone to talk about the concept of "outside of time." Expert minds have written on the philosophy of time, but I will use physics as a touchstone instead. 

Let’s get into it.

God has an existence without a ticking clock marking minutes or hours, without a calendar marking days.

Insofar as God is interested in hours and days, that’s an interest in us and our world. Within the being of God, outside of time, there are no minutes and days any more than there are yards and miles.

God exists outside time. Therefore, anything that flows from within the being of God exists outside time. Whereas anything that exists separate from God exists in time and space.

 

God and the Word and the Spirit

So what flows from within God? Well, God’s Holy Spirit does. It’s his own Spirit, so of course it is intrinsic to the being of God. The Holy Spirit is not separate from God. The Holy Spirit proceeds from within God, right from out of God’s very being. Therefore, the Holy Spirit must exist outside of time, if its source, God the Father, exists outside of time. 

The Holy Spirit shares that existence in common, outside time. God and his Spirit are outside of time in a shared existence together.

What else flows from within God? Well, God’s Word (God’s Son) does. The son is “begotten” from within God’s own being. As such, God’s Word must exist outside of time, as God exists outside of time. That which is begotten "outside of time" exists outside of time. The creed speaks of “light from light.” It’s light flowing from within light without a break between them. Just as light doesn’t age, neither do they.

So God and his Word and his Spirit exist outside of time. They are uncreated, not created. They are of one existence together. There is no point of reference outside of time that they can be measured against. If there were such a measurable point, it would disqualify God from being outside of time. They would be inside time and space being measured against a point of reference! To be outside of space and time, then, is a unique existence that must be God’s and God’s alone.

To draw that out a bit, let’s suppose an imaginary line. On one side of the line is time and space where we are, all milling about, products of time and space - creation – everything in heaven and earth. On the other side of the line, there is only the uncreated God. This is God and his Word and his Spirit, uncreated, not products of time and space.

In the words of the early church, this is the eternal generation of the Son. The Son, the Word, exists by “eternal generation,” timelessly generated within the very being of God, where there can be no beginning and no end. The Word is generated outside of time and space, not within time and space.

 

The language of metaphor

We need to take a breath to remember that so much of language is metaphor. When God speaks to us as a Father, he’s talking our language. Father = metaphor. Which is fine. It helps us to know God as a loving Father. It doesn’t mean we have to imagine God sitting in the clouds with children on his knee. It’s the language of metaphor. The same goes for the language of “begetting." It's all metaphor and analogy to human experience. But within the being of God, it is obvious that it is all metaphor, fatherhood and begetting, and shouldn’t be pressed into literalness. God is beyond our conventional understanding of the physical universe. We who inhabit space and time need a picture to hang onto. Our brains are well wired for finding concrete things like food and shelter and a mate. And God gives us metaphor to help us understand him.

And, since we're talking about metaphor, “outside” of time isn’t even a very good description of what this is about! Maybe a better phrase would be “that which is not time-able.”

The word “space” is also a problem, because what physicists mean is a “void” – with things in the void that can be measured for distance. You can’t touch space – it’s just a void.

So “outside of time” would mean something like “other than measurable and other than time-able.” But “outside of time” trips off the tongue more easily and helps us picture in metaphors!

 

What is time anyway?

Space and time are numerical values. They are not stuff you can touch. They are metrics. A watch isn’t time. It’s just measuring.

Time and space are measurements between things in creation. Physicists don’t know that the void of space is a ‘thing’ in itself. (I'm not saying that space-time is nothing, either. See below about current speculation.) When physicists talk about space, they mean they are measuring distances between things. And when physicists talk about time, they mean they are timing something – something starts and ends and they are timing it. It’s best to think of time as a verb, “to time something.” Space and time are metrics, not stuff. As soon as something exists, metrics exist. In science fiction, they sometimes make a technical mistake by speaking of time speeding up or slowing down – it doesn’t really, it's just a measurement being made from different perspectives.

Where there’s stuff – mass and energy, like the Sun, Earth and Moon – it can be measured. Space and time between them can be measured.

Now, of course, scientists used to think that time was absolute and constant, that a second was a second. But Einstein demonstrated that when a second ticks, it is a matter of perspective. 

Your perspective means where you are, how far from other people, and how fast you are moving compared to them. Other people are not in the same place as you, and are not moving at the same speed as you, and a second to them looks slightly different. In theory anyway. The difference is too small to notice but atomic clocks in different places in vehicles travelling at vastly different road speeds would show the difference – or at least a spacecraft orbiting round the earth at immense speed does. 

A second isn’t just a second. It’s something time-able from a perspective. Everything in the universe, scientists realised, has a very “relative” relationship with anything one tries to time, and anything one tries to pinpoint.

When physicists think about space and time, it’s with a mind like a tape measure. Space and time are not the ‘thing’, they are just the measurements. A referee’s watch is not the football match. If you see what I mean.

Still, we have to think in pictures. Where there are things like the Sun and the Moon and the Earth, space-time is curved round them, and people like to talk about that as curved “fabric” of space-time, but it’s not fabric. There’s no fabric. 

That doesn't decisively mean that space-time is nothing either - it's something that physicists are working on in attempts to reconcile two theories - special relativity with quantum mechanics. In fact, some of those scientists are researching the idea of the emergence of space-time from a more fundamental underlying structure! Although one needs to be fairly reserved about this as a commentator. If there is an underlying structure, perhaps it too is, in a sense, a matter of time and space!

That all matters for our subject - we'll see how in a moment. 

 

What does ‘outside of time’ mean anyway?

Back to God. God exists outside of time. We’re not talking about a timeless “space.” If you have space, then you have time. If a space can be measured, then something in it can be timed too. And it’s true the other way round too. If something can be timed, then there is a space between things that can be measured. Neither of these things applies to God. God is outside of time.

If God “has a thought” outside of time, so be it. That’s “where” it “happens.”

But, let’s be clear, the concept of “outside of time” currently belongs in philosophy, theology and science fiction. Scientists are not conducting any experiments on anything ‘outside of time’ because it would be impossible to begin or end an experiment.  

It’s not an easy concept anyway because as humans we generally need to picture things. Seconds and minutes don’t exist outside of time. It’s not that there are zero seconds or an infinite number of seconds there. It’s not a place of zero time or infinite time. The point is that measurements don’t belong outside of time at all. That’s kind of central to the concept.

And being without time, it has to be without space too. It’s simply different to our experience, and the possibilities transcend our experiences.

Scientists can’t do anything to prove there is an “outside of time” existence. Unlike time and space, God cannot be measured in numerical values. You have to be inside time and space to have anything measurable about you. We only have space-time science. Maybe one day, there will be a way for scientists to hypothesise about the effects of what God does in our universe, and then triangulate (analogy again!) something about God’s existence. But we’re not there at the moment!

Physics can’t answer a question about what exists outside the realm of physics. Physics wants something to time and something to measure and see how they connect together. And the problem of “outside of time” is that it’s difficult even for theoretical physics to speculate about it, because how could you write an equation for something that has no measurements to measure?

 

God and time

As said, God is beyond our conventional understanding of the physical universe. God is beyond all that.  

God can choose to engage with our time and space, all of it. To us time is the long gone past, or the present, or the future beyond us. To God, it is all available to hand, all open to view. With God, there is no timer on it.

(In another post, I talk about whether an omnipotent God can veil the future from his view to any degree. But that's another subject!)

 

Why eternal generation of the Word?

Back to what John chapter 1 calls the Word, which was with God in the beginning.

Now, when anything exists separate from God, that’s creation. It’s what God made. Indeed, when anything exists separate from God, then time and space automatically exist with it. That’s a given, because if a created thing is there, then there is something measurable in some way. 

But God is outside of time, and therefore that which comes from within his being is outside of time. That is, I mean same kind from same kind. For the Holy Spirit, that’s timeless procession. For the Son, that’s timeless begotten-ness. (The biblical words in John’s Gospel are: the Spirit proceeds; and the Son is begotten.)

Here’s the issue that it comes down to. The eternal generation of God’s Word. There are only three possibilities:

      A)      The Word hails from an existence where there is no time and space. The Word shares an uncreated existence with God.

      B)      Or the Word was created, is therefore measurable, and therefore time and space were automatically created in the identical moment of creation.

      C)      Or the order is different: time and space were created first, and after that the Word was created.

But B and C would inadvertently destroy the vital sense of John 1:3, which actually says, “All things were made through him [the Word], and without him was not any thing made that was made.” That means time and space were created through the Word. 

But B and C clumsily fail to allow for that. You see, if the Word were created, then the Word is not with God outside of time, and therefore is in time and space and didn't create time and space. 

Having space-time is an automatic consequence of any created thing existing. 

Here's the problem then. If the Word were created, created separate from God, then space-time automatically got created with it, which would mean the Word wasn't the one who created space-time.

But, in contrast, John says that nothing was created except through the Word. That means time and space were created through the Word. John effectively means that time and space came into existence after the Word was already existing. That rules out B and C. That leaves only option A: the Word hails from an existence where there is no time and space. 

The Word is generated outside of time and space, not within time and space.

Only God is outside of time. And that's where the Word is. As I said earlier, that which is begotten "outside of time" exists outside of time. 

So that means we must relate God's Word to God's out-of-time existence. 

Nothing but God and Word and Spirit exist outside of time. The Word therefore has to be uncreated. The Word exists by “eternal generation,” timelessly generated, timelessly begotten, within the very being of God. Eternal generation is an 'outside of time' generation.

Just as the Holy Spirit timelessly proceeds from the eternal God. 

God and Word and Spirit are uncreated. Nothing else is. They are one. 

 

Further reading

In my book God in 3D: Finding the Trinity in the Bible and the Church Fathers, on pages 191-192, I illustrate from the Bible's temple narratives that God and his Name and his Glory correlate with the concept of the eternal generation of the Son. 

Afterthoughts

An article could be written on the eternal procession of the Holy Spirit, but it would cover much of the same ground, so I won't write that for the moment.

I sometimes wonder if Father and Son and Spirit experience something analogous to time, relating to each other, which – if it was a thing - would be an attribute of God like omniscience and omnipotence. But I won’t push that further than analogy.

And what implications does all this have for the Open View of God? That one is for another time! I must re-read Greg Boyd's God of the Possible!

 

Strikingly Trinitarian patterns in Ante-Nicene writings

I'll just leave these here, without comment for now, as a handy reference tool for anyone who wants to use it. The sources are easy to find online with any standard search engine. 

 

Clement of Rome (30-100 CE)

“Have we not one God and one Christ and one Spirit of grace that was shed upon us?" (46:9)

(Clement here reflects Paul's usage in 1 Cor 8:6 and Eph 4:4-6.)

By the way, the personal quality of the Holy Spirit is conveyed by Clement like this: “For the Holy Ghost saith, ‘Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom…" (13:2-3)

(Clement here reflects Paul's usage in 1 Corinthians 1:32 to 2:4.)

Ignatius (40-115 CE)

“Be zealous, therefore, to stand squarely on the decrees of the Lord and the Apostles, that in all things whatsoever you may prosper, in body and in soul, in faith and in love, in the Son and the Father and the Spirit… Submit to the bishop and to each other's rights, just as did Jesus Christ in the flesh to the Father, and as the Apostles did to Christ and the Father and the Spirit...” (Ignatius to Magnesians 13)

Polycarp (69-155 CE)

“I praise thee, I bless thee, I glorify thee, together with the eternal and heavenly Jesus Christ thy beloved Son, with whom to thee and the Holy Spirit be glory both now and for ever. Amen.”

Papias (70-150 CE) 

“those who are saved… ascend through the Spirit to the Son, and through the Son to the Father”

Justin Martyr (110-164 CE)

"But both Him, and the Son… and the prophetic Spirit, we worship and adore."

Athenagoras (c 175AD)

‘For, as we acknowledge a God, and a Son his Logos, and a Holy Spirit, united in essence’

Irenaeus (125-203 CE)

 “For with Him were always present the Word and Wisdom, the Son and the Spirit, by whom and in whom, freely and spontaneously, He made all things, to whom also He speaks, saying, "Let Us make man after Our image and likeness”

Clement of Alexandria (145-220 CE)

"I understand nothing else than the Holy Trinity to be meant; for the third is the Holy Spirit, and the Son is the second, by whom all things were made according to the will of the Father."

“and praising thank the Alone Father and Son, Son and Father, the Son, Instructor and Teacher, with the Holy Spirit, all in One, in whom is all, for whom all is One, for whom is eternity”

Tertullian (160-230 CE)

“For the very Church itself is, properly and principally, the Spirit Himself, in whom is the Trinity of the One Divinity--Father, Son. and Holy Spirit.”

Hippolytus (c. 170-c. 236)

“For it is through this Trinity that the Father is glorified. For the Father willed, the Son did, the Spirit manifested. The whole Scriptures, then, proclaim this truth.”

Origen (185-253/4 CE)

“From all which we learn that the person of the Holy Spirit was of such authority and dignity, that saving baptism was not complete except by the authority of the most excellent Trinity of them all, i.e., by the naming of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and by joining to the unbegotten God the Father, and to His only-begotten Son, the name also of the Holy Spirit.”

Cyprian (200-257 CE)

 “and again it is written of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, "And these three are one."

 

 

 

Who needs an indefinite article when an indefinite pronoun can do the job?

 

Who needs an indefinite article when an indefinite pronoun can do the job? Let’s talk about New Testament Greek again.

Quite often, New Testament commentators mention that Greek does not have an indefinite article, but more often fail to mention that Greek does have an indefinite pronoun, which can serve a similar purpose to an indefinite article.

And guess what - I’m talking about John 1:1 again. And the occasion for writing again, and I should disclose it, is that some Jehovah’s Witnesses are adamant that it makes sense to translate John 1:1c as “and the Word was a god (theos),” relying on their argument that the lack of a definite article with theos dictates that it’s an indefinite noun: ‘a god’. Yes, I’ve actually been told that it ‘dictates’ this, which will make plenty of people wince.

Apologies if this is wearing some readers out. 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. While New Testament Greek doesn’t have an indefinite article, it does have an indefinite pronoun. So we really ought to see how it’s used, and whether it could have been applied to John 1:1 if John had so wanted.

The thing is this: if John desperately wanted you to read John 1:1 as 'a god', he could have made recourse to using the indefinite pronoun 'tis' with 'theos' to make it clearly read 'a god'. Not very elegant Greek, but the New Testament isn’t always very elegant Greek.

 

Tis

Sometimes in English translations where you see an indefinite article, such as “a young man,” there is actually a word there in Greek that has been translated as “a.”

It’s thus for the Greek word tis.

It’s the use of tis that produces:

·         'a young man' in Mark 14:51 (NIV & NJB & NEB)

·         'a priest' in Luke 1:5 (RSV & NIV & NEB)

·         'a man' in Acts 10:1 (RSV & NIV & NEB)

And other similarly indefinite results. It’s corresponding to an indefinite pronoun in the Greek.

Tis is also expressed in English as ‘some.’ But some translators, to convey the meaning in a slightly less indefinite-sounding way, may translate it as “a certain man.” For example, because we are going to find out more about that person. But it's an indefinite pronoun. 

For more on this, click here.

But tis isn’t the only word used to convey the same sense as an indefinite article.

 

Heis

Yes, there’s more. If John wanted to use a word to convey indefiniteness, and didn’t want to use tis, he also had the Greek word heis available. The word for the number ‘one,’ heis can also be used as an indefinite pronoun.

On the one hand, this can be done with adjectival force, for example "a scribe" in Matthew 8:19. Or as a full pronoun, for example "a ruler of the synagogue" in Mark 5:22.  

For more on this, click here.

 

Conclusion

So, if it were important to John that readers specifically disconnect Jesus – the Word – from God, as separate beings with theos meaning two different things, then the tools were at hand for the eager communicator. There ways round the lack of an indefinite article. Even if it makes inelegant Greek.

So, John did not make recourse to these tools, and it all adds weight to the point that John indicates no desire to capture an indefinite sense in his use of ‘theos’ in John 1:1. It’s not ‘a god’ on any compelling grounds. John never asked for it to be.

If John were asking for that, it would not have been overly difficult to do, given the availability of different Greek words to convey indefiniteness and different Greek words for ideas of divinity. John could have made one of them ho theos and the other heis theioteôs or tis theion. Not the most elegant Greek, but the New Testament isn't always elegant Greek. Instead, John chose the same word twice, theos. So 'ho theos... theos.' Choosing this over more differentiating alternatives ought to tell us something. It indicates the absolute sameness of God and the Word in an essential way. It points towards two persons, one essence.

 

Footnote

What’s more, the Greek word for 'God' (theos) at times appears article-less but still refers to THE God anyway! There is no mechanical reason compelling the use of an indefinite article in English every time a definite article is lacking in Greek.

So, for example, in John’s prologue, we find theos without the definite article in John 1:6 ('a representative of God'), John 1:12 ('children of God'), John 1:13 ('from God'), and John 1:18 ('No man has seen God'). I could go on.

We don’t translate these as 'a representative of a god', 'children of a god', 'from a god', and 'no man has seen a god.' In other words, the article-less theos does not automatically dictate an indefinite meaning. Sometimes the lack of a definite has an indefinite sense, sometimes it doesn’t.

An indefinite sense doesn’t even necessarily follow where a verse has both ‘ho theos’ and ‘theos.’

For instance, John 3:2 has both 'theos' and 'ho theos.' But both refer to the one God.

 John 6:45-46 has both 'theos' and 'ho theos.' But both refer to the one God.

Other examples of verses that have ‘theos’ and ‘ho theos’ together: John 9:31-33 (in 9:33 you will find 'para theou' rather than the explicit 'para tou theo' of John 6:46; and 13:3 (a more easily explained example - the accusative has the explicit article but the genitive does not).

By the way, John sometimes says 'apo theou' talking about God the Father, whereas Luke will say 'apo tou theou' (Acts 26:22).

Only a clumsy translator would try to duplicate the same English rendering for every Greek construction that might have a common factor, regardless of the context etc. So the lack of a definite article in Greek can mean so many different things.

And the lack of an indefinite article can be made up for by an indefinite pronoun. 

One really hopes that this, together with a bundle of other useful points, would discourage people from over-stating the significance of the lack of a definite article here and there.