What if we infer an indefinite article in John 1:1? (Letting John tell his story.)

 

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 way of being ‘a god.’ And sometimes, they like to start talking about the grammar of indefinite nouns. This is all basically 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? (The answer, obviously, is two.)

But to the subject. In this post, I want to explain why the claim that Jesus is ‘a god’ is self-defeating.

In the course of doing so, a question I also intend to answer is this: is the qualitative noun 'god' 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 comes in saying that 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.

Distinction?

The Jehovah's Witness oft-rehearsed arguments about Jesus being "inferior to Jehovah" are an attempt to make a distinction that disconnects God from the Word to split them apart into separate beings. To be kind, that seems to be an attempt to jealously guard their idea of what monotheism means. But it seems to have the opposite effect to what they intend, making a "two gods" introduction to John's Gospel.

The thing is, by using the same word, 'theos' ('god') to describe both God and the Word, which John does, then John is setting up the reader to assume that they are in the same class of thing. If John were eager to lead the reader towards the opposite view, he could have set this up by referring to one of them with this word theos, and referred to the other one with the alternative term theion or theiotes or theotes. The tools were there if John wanted to lead the reader to disconnect them from each other. There is nothing to suggest that John had any such intention. He uses the word 'theos' for both God and the Word. 

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.

Letting John tell his story

Does an indefinite reading hold water? Is the Word separate, ‘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. Everything in creation is made by God through his Word at the start of John's story.

Trying to make Jesus ‘a god’ is to put him in a wider class of things. (Scroll down to the appendix at the foot of this page.) But that makes no sense in John 1:1. What class of gods can someone be in at a time before anything else exists, before there are other 'gods' or anything else? There is no class of creation to be part of. There would only be other 'gods' if Jesus made them. Therefore, ‘the Word’ is not ascribed membership in a class of gods that didn't exist before the creation of the cosmos. It just doesn’t work. 

In short then, 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 its own 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.

iv)  So then, back in the right sequence, they go forward in time again from the beginning to say that now Jesus has 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 separate moment where a class of gods exists, so that they can put their Jesus into that class of beings, and then backtrack in time. In John’s sequence that class of beings hadn’t been made yet, and so his prologue doesn’t have any cause to explain that anyone else is in this assumed 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 by John in his prologue is ‘ho theos’ (God) and that is therefore the class to which this ‘theos’ (the Word - Jesus) can feasibly belong in the prologue. There’s no other theos mentioned there.

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 separately ‘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 - claiming 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.’

It is really just a way of squeezing the ‘indefinite’ in, as some 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'm surprised I haven't yet heard an appeal for 'a god' to be quantitative-indefinite. But again, that would just be another way to get the word 'indefinite' heard.

 

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. In 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.

And better still the NET Bible translation: “and the Word was fully God.” (https://netbible.org/bible/John+1 ) Qualitative leaning towards definiteness, beautifully captured.

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 unlike 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.