Chapter 22 — "The Word Was God"
The Incarnate Christ and His Critics (Komoszewski & Bowman, 2024)
---
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." (John 1:1)
Few verses in the Bible have generated more debate than this one. Entire books have been written about it. Translation choices have split communities. And at the center of the controversy sits a single Greek clause: kai theos ēn ho logos, "and the Word was God."
Does this verse really say the Word was God in the full sense? Does it mean something less? Something different?
Chapter 22 of The Incarnate Christ and His Critics puts John 1:1 under the microscope, and what it finds is that the traditional reading, "the Word was God," is linguistically correct, contextually supported, and theologically coherent.
The Three Clauses
John 1:1 contains three closely related statements:
- "In the beginning was the Word." The Word (logos) existed before creation, outside of time.
- "The Word was with God." The Word was in personal relationship with God the Father. They're distinct.
- "The Word was God." The Word shared the divine nature fully. He was God.
The third clause has an interesting word order in Greek: theos ēn ho logos, literally "God was the Word." Putting the predicate noun ("God") before the verb draws attention to the quality being described. Many scholars, including the very liberal C.H. Dodd, agree that this construction means the Word shared the divine nature, without implying that the Word was the only God or was identical with the Father.
So the grammar of the verse itself holds together the distinction between the Word and the Father (clause 2) and the Word's full divinity (clause 3).
The JW Objection
The Jehovah's Witnesses' New World Translation renders John 1:1 as "the Word was a god." They argue that since Greek has no indefinite article, theos here should be translated with one, making the Word a lesser divine being.
This translation has been rejected by virtually every Greek scholar on the planet, including ones with no stake in the theological debate. Inserting "a" isn't demanded by Greek grammar. It actually introduces a category, "a god," that's alien to the Jewish monotheism John was writing within.
Philip Harner, in a landmark 1973 article in the Journal of Biblical Literature, analyzed constructions like the one in John 1:1c and concluded that the predicate noun (theos, without an article) describes the nature or quality of the subject. The Word has the nature of God. He's divine in the same sense the Father is divine, not in a lesser, "a god" sense.
The grammar supports the traditional reading. The theology demands it.
The Progressive Christian Reinterpretation
Progressive scholars like Marcus Borg try a different angle. They connect John's logos to the Jewish concept of Wisdom (sophia) and argue that John is merely personifying an attribute of God poetically, not making a literal statement about Jesus' divine nature. On this reading, John 1:1 doesn't mean Jesus was God. It means Jesus embodied divine wisdom.
But that interpretation runs aground on what the rest of the Prologue says. John 1:3 says "all things were made through him." John 1:14 says "the Word became flesh." John 1:18 calls him "the only Son, God, who is at the Father's side." This isn't poetry about a divine attribute. It's personal language about a personal being who existed before creation and entered into it.
If John merely wanted to say "Jesus was full of divine wisdom," he chose an extraordinarily misleading way to say it.
The Context Within the Prologue
One important principle in Bible interpretation: don't read a verse in isolation. John 1:1 has to be understood in the context of the whole Prologue (John 1:1-18).
By the time we reach verse 14, "the Word became flesh," we know the Word is a personal being (he was "with God" and became "flesh," actions only persons perform), that he existed before creation (verse 1), that he's the agent of all creation (verse 3), that he came into the world (verses 9-10), that he was rejected (verse 11) and received (verse 12), and that those who receive him become children of God (verse 12). And he's identified as Jesus Christ (verse 17).
This isn't a meditation on a divine attribute. It's the biography of a divine person who stepped into human history as a human being.
A Word for the Believer
There's something quietly overwhelming about the simplicity of John 1:1. In the beginning, before the first star was lit, before the first word was spoken over the waters, the Word was there. And the Word was God. The eternal, loving, divine person who holds the universe together was the same one who would one day be wrapped in linen and laid in a tomb.
He was there at the beginning. He'll be there at the end. And he's present now.
"The Word was God." Three words in Greek. The weight of eternity in a single sentence.
---