"The Word Was God"

Start with a question If a verse said "God was with God," you would stop and ask what it means. John 1:1 comes close to that. So let us not rush past it. Let us read it carefully, without allowing centuries of philosophical creeds to dictate what the text must say.

Three clauses

Look at the three distinct statements John makes in verse 1:

1. "In the beginning was the Word": The Word already existed when things began. It echoes Genesis 1:1.
2. "The Word was with God": The Word is distinct from God. One who is with someone is not the same person as that someone.
3. "The Word was God": The Word is God, or divine.

Everyone agrees on clauses 1 and 2. The debate is over clause 3: what does "was God" mean?

What the Greek tells us You do not need to be a Greek scholar to follow this, but we must look at the text honestly. The key detail is simple. In clause 2, "God" has the Greek definite article (ton theon, "the God"), and in clause 3 it does not (theos).

Because of this, three readings are held:

1. "The Word was God." (KJV, most Bibles.) The Word is fully God. Most Trinitarians read it this way and take it to mean sharing the one divine being.
2. "The Word was divine," or "what God was, the Word was" (the New English Bible). The missing article shows quality: the Word had the nature of God.
3. "The Word was a god." (The Jehovah's Witnesses' New World Translation.) This implies a second, lesser god.

This course does not follow reading 3. It sits uneasily with the Bible's testimony that there is one God, and with "all things were made by him," since a created lesser god could not have made everything.

But what about readings 1 and 2? The Greek grammar alone cannot decide between them. Scholars disagree, so we should too, honestly. What the grammar does tell us is that the Word has the nature of God, and that John did not write "the Word was the God" (with the article), as he did when speaking of the one the Word was "with."

We must not build a massive philosophical doctrine on a grammatical technicality. We must let the author tell us what he means.

The Word is also the Son This is where we must apply the rule from The Antichrist Across Scripture: Scripture must be allowed to speak in its entirety. We cannot isolate John 1:1 from the rest of John's prologue.

John immediately tells us who the Word is:

The Word who "was God" is the "only begotten of the Father," the Son in the Father's bosom. John does not introduce a co-equal, co-eternal second person of a philosophical Trinity. He introduces the Son. The Word is the Son in His pre-incarnate state.

How the three clauses fit together Put the three clauses together with John's own definitions:

1. The Word existed in the beginning (and made all things, v. 3).
2. The Word is distinct from God (the Father): "with God."
3. The Word is God by nature, as the Son: "the only begotten of the Father."

That reading keeps every clause. The Word is not the Father (clause 2), and He is divine (clause 3).

The Trinitarian reading and the question to ask A Trinitarian reads clauses 2 and 3 as: two Persons, one being. The Word is distinct as a Person and the same as the Father in being. That is consistent with the text. Where the two views differ is on what the text itself tells us about the basis of the Word's deity.

Here is the test. Does John 1:1 say the Word is "the one God," or does it say the Word is "with God" and "was God"?

And a second test: What does John say, in the very same book, about "the only true God"?

The grammar allows either reading, so John himself settles it. In his Gospel John records Jesus calling the Father “the only true God” (John 17:3), and in his letters John speaks of “the Father” and “the Son” as two (1 John 2:22–23; 2 John 9). John uses “the true God” of the Father, so the first reading is the one that agrees with John.

The reading we have followed in these lessons does exactly this: the Word is divine (John 1:1), and the Father is "the only true God," the source of the Word (John 17:3; 1 Corinthians 8:6; John 5:26).