John 1:1.
Rev. J. J. Summerbell,
DEAR BROTHER:-Will you please explain in THE HERALD of Gospel LIBERTY, St. John, first chapter and first verse, and oblige,
Your brother in Christ,
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ANSWER.
One of the great attributes of God is truth, or knowledge, or reason, or wisdom, the Word.
This attribute, the Word, became incarnated when Jesus was born at Bethlehem. See verse 14, “The word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.”
However, before that time, the Word existed in a divine being distinguished from the Father; even “in the beginning.” It is probable that “the beginning” spoken of was the “beginning” referred to in Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” We believe that the agent of God, “in the beginning,” in the creating of the God; for in Hebrews 1:2, we read that God “through him made the worlds.” For beautiful confirmation of this, read Paul's words in Colossians, 1:12-18. And John (1:3) says, “All things were made through him.”
Turn directly to John 1:1, and translate it literally, as modern translators have not been brave enough to do:
“In the beginning was the word, and the word was with the God, and the word was (a) God;” or (a) god; or (a) divine being.
That is, the word was divine; it was of the nature of deity. It was not the God, however, for it was with “the God.” And John emphasizes this point, by saying in the next verse, the very next language, “The same was in beginning with the God.” He makes a clear distinction between him whom he here calls the God, and all other divine beings. We must remember that he was writing for an age when cultivated men believed there “were gods many and lords many” (see 1 Cor. 8:5).
This being whom John calls the word, or the Word, was in the beginning with the God, and was himself of the nature of God. And “All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that hath been made.” He was made so much better than the angels as he hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they (see Hebrews 1st chapter). This Word was the embodiment of the wisdom, reason, truth, light, or knowledge of God, “in the beginning;” and at the birth in Bethlehem, this great attribute of God was incarnated, made flesh, in Jesus, the “only begotten of the Father.” And he was the light of the world: “the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world.”
(There is absolutely nothing, except the sense, in the original Greek of John 1:1, to show how the capitals should be placed in our English. There lies before us a facsimile of the Alexandrian manuscript of John 1:1, and the letters in the body of the text are all of equal size; in fact, they might all be called capitals, for there is only one kind of letter. In the first Greek manuscripts there was no distinction; all were what we call capitals. The distinction between capitals and small letters was the invention of a later age. Hence, whether we are to capitalize the word theos (god or God) depends wholly on the sense; and, therefore, we cannot determine the sense by the capitals, either in English or Greek. In our modern Greek Testaments the word theos (God) is not often begun with a capital letter).
Jesus was with the Father in the beginning, and himself was a divine being, and was the one through whom God made all things.
The omission, by John, of the definite article the before the word theos (god) compels us to accept the word in that case as a generic word, including the class. John carefully distinguishes between the theos (God), the Father, and the theos that refers to the Son, by joining the Greek article to the former; and he makes this same distinction by the Greek article in the second verse, which, literally translated, reads, “The same was in beginning with the God.”
Brethren who may wish to learn how imperative this argument, derived from the Greek use of the definite article, may be, should consult an extensive Greek grammar. In Winer's New Testament Grammar, translated by Thayer, 7th edition, page 122, occur these words, applying to the very case in question:
“In John 1:1 theos en ho logos the Art. could not have been omitted if John had intended to designate the logos as ho theos, because in this connection theos alone would be ambiguous. But that John designedly wrote theos is apparent, partly from the distinct antithesis pros ton theon verses 1, 2, and partly from the whole description of the logos. Similarly stands in l Peter 4: 19 pistos ktistes without the Art.”
In that passage, 1 Pet. 4:19, the grammarian calls our attention to the will of the God, and (a) faithful creator. That is, in this case creator is a generic word, the article being omitted before it, whereas the God is specific, the use of the definite article limiting it to him who is always the infinite God, in whom we live and move and have our being; the God.
To illustrate such cases of the definite article, even in our own language, we might manufacture some sentences:
(Some years ago there was talk of a meeting between President Diaz, of Mexico, and President Harrison, of the United States. If it had occurred, a writer might have written,)
In California was Diaz, and Diaz was with the President, and Diaz was a president.
(It may be remembered by those familiar with the history of Napoleon the Great, then Emperor of the French, that on a certain occasion he met with the Czar of Russia, at Erfurth. A French historian might have written,)
At Erfurth was the Czar Alexander; Alexander was with the Emperor, Alexander was an emperor.
(A yachtsman, looking from his club-house might say,)
On the flagstaff is the pennant, and the pennant is with the flag, and the pennant is a flag.
The hearer would understand him to mean that the pennant was with the flag of our country, the flag.
Thus illustrations might be multiplied indefinitely.
It may be asked, Why was not the distinction made in our English Bibles by the translators? We answer that we believe that the translation was colored by dogmatic belief. There are two prevailing classes of theologians:
(1) Those who wish to make it appear by the translation, if possible, that more than one God existed in the Godhead. They seemed to believe that this could be done vaguely by using the word with the capital and without the article the, when applied to the Father, and likewise with the capital letter when applied to the other person, the Son of God.
(2) The second influential class among the learned consisted of those who wished to obscure the doctrine of the divinity of Jesus altogether; and this could be done by making John 1:1 largely meaningless or contradictory. And so the passage has been left in an ambiguous form, as though John meant to teach that the Word was the infinite God whom he was with. This has been a disgrace to the learned men of Christendom in modern times. We are sorry to believe that the accurate distinction which John made between the Son of God and the Father has been intentionally obscured by popular theologians.
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