"Jehovah’s Witnesses use John 1:1 to show that Jesus was 'a god,' not 'the God,' because no definite article the appears in the Greek. This misunderstands both the language and the verse. In Greek, the definite article is normally used to stress 'the individual,' and when it is not present the reference is to 'the nature' of the one denoted. Thus, the verse can be rendered, 'And the Word was of the nature of God.'"
Reply: I think a better way to put this is that the definite article is normally used to stress 'the subject,' and while it is true that the lack of a definite article can denote "nature" it can also denote indefiniteness.
For instance John 6:70 which has a similar construction to John 1:1c (preverbal predicate nominative) and the RSV translates this as: "Did I not choose you, the twelve, and one of you is a devil?"
Conceivably this could be translated "Did I not choose you, the twelve, and one of you has the nature of a devil?" though most translators choose not to. But elsewhere this becomes ackward. At John 4:19 we have: "Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet." It would be strange to say: "Sir, I perceive that you have the nature of a prophet."
We have other instances in John's gospel where the indefinite article "a" was added to the noun before the verb:
8:44 A murderer
8:44 A liar
8:48 A Samaritan
9:17 A prophet
10:1 A thief
10:13 A hired hand
10:33 A man
12:6 A thief
18:37 A king
I conclude then that it is grammatical to add the indefinite "a" to John 1:1c as well.
More from the Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics by Norman L. Geisler (p. 39): "In the context of the following verses and the rest of John (for example, 1:3; 8:58; 10:30; 20:28) it is impossible that John 1:1 suggests that Jesus is anything less than divine."
Reply: How does referring to the Word/Jesus as "a god" makes him "less than divine?" What does "divine" mean? According to Webster's Third New International Dictionary (1962) it means - "of or relating to God: proceeding from God...b: of or relating to a god; having the nature of a god; like a god or like that of a god."
More from the Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics by Norman L. Geisler (p. 39): The rest of the New Testament joins John in forthrightly proclaiming that Jesus is God (for example, in Colossians 1:15–16 and Titus 2:13).
Reply: Colossians 1 calls Jesus the "firstborn of creation" making him part of creation and Titus 2:13 can be translated several different ways. As John Locke once wrote: "There is scarcely one text alleged by the Trinitarians which is not otherwise expounded by their own writers."
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