“…who are Israelites, to whom pertain the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the service of God, and the promises; of whom are the fathers and from whom, according to the flesh, Christ came, who is over all, the eternally blessed God. Amen” (Rom 9:4-5 NKJV).
The clearest statement in the whole bible to show the deity of Jesus Christ is the opening verse of the Gospel of John. It reads, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God” (Jn 1:1). Therefore it has become a prime target for the enemies of the gospel.
One of the changes that the Watch Tower Society (Jehovah’s Witnesses) has made to the English text of this verse is to remove the definite article (i.e. “the”), and replace it with the indefinite article (“a”); (it should be understood that Greek only has the definite article – there is no indefinite article). Thus, their text reads “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a god”. There is a footnote to “a god” which says “Or ‘was divine’” (“New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures”, 2017).
The Greek Grammar
It is true that in Greek, the disputed passage (Jn 1:1) does not have the definite article (“the”) before the word “God”; the literal reading in Greek is “God was the Word”. But this is the same as saying, “the Word was God”. As proper nouns in Greek are preceded by the definite article, both “God” and “Word” when used separately would be preceded by “the”; and as they are both in the nominative case, only one of them requires the definite article which is placed before the word which come first in the sentence or clause. So if “God was the Word”, translational principles demand that it reads “the Word was God” – it can’t be understood in any other way. Bible scholars and heretics have been arguing this point almost since the beginning of Christianity. But the arguments have become unnecessarily quite technical and confusing. It is well then that God has provided the Truth for us more simply in the English bible. While knowing the Greek of Scripture is necessary for scholars, ordinary laymen don’t have to depend on its difficult Greek grammar to know whether or not Jesus is God or a god. The bible is all about Jesus, both as Jehovah in the Old Testament and Son of God in the New Testament, and it tells us clearly who he is and what we need to know about him.
So the reading “and the Word was a god” of the Watch Tower’s New World Translation is not only grammatically incorrect but is in contradiction to the rest of New Testament teaching that God is the only God. If the Word is “a god”, then it stands to reason that the NWT teaches there is more than one god.
Contradictory Teachings
There are some teachings in the bible which seem to contradict other teachings. It is just so with the deity and the humanity of Jesus. Both these doctrines, Jesus’ true deity and his true humanity, are taught because they are both true; they run throughout Scripture as two parallel lines. Thus, John 1:1-2 shows us both the equality of Jesus (the Word) with God (the Father), and his separateness from the Father. And John 1 also reveals some of the attributes of God which Jesus possesses – the power of Creation (1:3, 10), and as the source of life (1:4, 12). He also shows the separateness of Jesus from God and yet his oneness with God (1:14, 18).
But the Watch Tower has made the mistake of rejecting one of these doctrines at the expense of the other. Jehovah’s Witnesses can’t accept the deity of Jesus because the many passages of scripture which show him to be human get in their way; so they reject those passages which reveal his deity. In order to explain the many passages which speak of his deity, such as John 1:1, they have invented a new type of being, one which is more Gnostic than Christian, and have de-throned Jesus, robbing him of his majesty, glory, power, and authority, and making him into some kind of super being but less than God – he is, in their theology, “a god”, not Jehovah; divine but not deity. But there is no such distinction in reality. The dictionary definition of “divine” means “God” or “a god”.
One only has to look at the first two chapters of the Epistle to the Hebrews to see these two doctrines, the deity of Jesus in chapter 1, and the humanity of Jesus in chapter 2, clearly expressed. For example, to take a passage from chapter 1, we’re told that Jesus is infinitely above angels: “Let all the angels of God worship him….But to the Son he says, Your throne, O God, is forever and ever” (Heb 1:6, 8). This scripture shows that angels are created beings and have therefore not existed from eternity; at the same time it reveals that Jesus has always existed; he has always been God.
And to take one from chapter 2: “Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise shared in the same, that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil….For indeed He does not give aid to angels, but He does give aid to the seed of Abraham…..For in that He Himself has suffered, being]tempted, He is able to aid those who are tempted” (Heb 2:14, 16, 18).
Even if Jesus is the most exalted being ever to have been created, with power equal to God’s power, he would still be a created being and therefore finite, having had a beginning; he would not be God. If he is not God and not an angel, what is he? The NWT footnote says he is divine; but this divinity the Watch Tower allows is not full deity. It is a “lesser divinity” not equal with God, and therefore there is an infinite distance between Jesus and God; it is the very difference between finite or infinite, mortal or immortal, a creature of time or an eternal God, created or having neither beginning nor end. And therefore Christ’s death could never be effective as atonement for fallen humanity. No matter how sublime a being he is, he is still a created being; therefore his sinless life and death can only benefit himself. Nothing less than full deity could give his death infinite value and therefore be an effective substitute for sinners.
Thus the scripture reveals to us that Jesus is both true God and true Man. These two teachings run throughout scripture; both are true although they seem to run counter to each other. The difficulty involved in trying to understand that both can be true, and the implications arising from it, can be seen in the struggles the Church of the first few centuries endured. Arianism, as does the Watch Tower, robbed Jesus of his deity and made him a glorified created being. Nestorianism taught that Jesus consisted of two separate Persons in the Incarnate Christ, the one Divine and the other human, instead of the truth thatthe Incarnate Christ was a single Person, at once God and man. Monophysitism said that the incarnate Christ has only one nature, not two. There were various expressions of Monophysitism though they all had this teaching at their heart. And Monarchianism in its different forms severely weakened and confused the three Persons of the Trinity. These struggles racked the Church through the centuries and caused much harm.
There is Only One God
The bible also assures us that there are not multiple gods but one only. “I am the Lord, and there is no other; There is no God besides Me….there is none besides Me. I am the Lord, and there is no other” (Isa 45:5-6). The apostle Paul wrote, “Therefore concerning the eating of things offered to idols, we know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is no other God but one. For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as there are many gods and many lords), yet for us there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we for Him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and through whom we live” (1 Cor 8:4-6). And to Timothy, he wrote, “For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim 2:5).
So it is clear that the bible throughout teaches that there is only one God. This being so, we must therefore translate the last clause in John 1:1 as “and the Word was God”, and not “and the Word was a god”.
Jesus as Separate from God
But how can Jesus (the Word) be God and yet separate from him? Here in his gospel, John reveals two of the Divine Persons, and in the book of Revelation, he again reveals Jesus as the living and true God, the Judge of all the earth: “And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called The Word of God….And he has on His robe and on His thigh a name written: King Of Kings, And Lord Of Lords” (Rev 19:13, 16). So we see how Jesus, the Word of God, can be at the same time God and yet with God; God and separate to God; God the Son along with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit; one God in a trinity of Persons. This is perfectly summarised, again by John: “For there are three that bear witness in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit; and these three are one” (1 John 5:7).
Who can understand such a mystery, that a being can consist of three persons? But we are only finite creatures, subject to limitations of physicality, location, mind, and understanding. How can we understand the Infinite? The doctrine of the Trinity is something that has to be revealed to us. God doesn’t try to explain how it can be – he simply says obliquely that it is. And we can accept and believe it, or reject it as impossible and ridiculous.
All scripture references in this article are taken from the New King James Version, online at BibleGateway.
BibleGateway.com: A searchable online Bible in over 150 versions and 50 languages.