And the Word Was... God?

In discussions about Jesus and his nature, believers often state emphatically that Jesus is God. They understand him to be one of the three persons of the Trinity and ontologically identical with YHWH, the God of the Hebrew Bible. While this position is held by many within orthodox Christianity, it is not a conclusion shared by many leading biblical scholars, and for good reason. In debates surrounding the question of Jesus’ divinity, one passage is cited perhaps more than any other: the prologue of the Gospel of John. In its opening line, we read, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."^[1] While I often defend the accuracy of the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition, this is one of those instances in which I think some revision is warranted. I prefer the translation given by German theologian and Professor of Systematic Theology Ernst Haenchen: “In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and divine [of the category divinity] was the Logos.”^[2]

The Logos Before Christianity

The Greek term translated as “Word” in John 1:1 is logos, a noun related to the Greek verb legō, meaning “to gather,” “to recount,” or “to speak.” From this basic idea, logos developed a remarkably broad range of meanings, including word, speech, statement, account, explanation, reason, principle, and rational order. This breadth is important for understanding John 1:1 because the English word “Word” communicates only part of what logos could convey to an ancient Greek-speaking audience. The opening of John is therefore not necessarily describing merely a spoken word of God. The term could also carry associations with reason, intelligibility, order, and divine agency. For this reason, I prefer to retain the Greek term itself and translate the opening as, “In the beginning was the Logos.”

The concept of the logos had already undergone centuries of philosophical development before Christianity appeared. Heraclitus, writing around the late sixth and early fifth centuries BCE, employed the term in connection with the rational order underlying reality.^[3] The Stoics later developed this idea much further, describing the logos as the rational principle permeating and ordering the cosmos.^[4] At the same time, Jewish literature had developed a closely related tradition centered on personified Wisdom, or sophia. Proverbs 8 portrays Wisdom as present with God in connection with creation, while later Jewish works such as Sirach and the Wisdom of Solomon describe Wisdom as proceeding from God, participating in creation, revealing God, and interacting with humanity. These were not originally identical concepts, but they provided overlapping ways of speaking about divine reason, creation, and revelation.

These Greek and Jewish traditions came into especially close contact in the writings of Philo of Alexandria, a Jewish philosopher who lived around the time of Jesus. Philo interpreted the Jewish Scriptures using concepts drawn from Greek philosophy and described the logos as God's highest power, the rational pattern of the cosmos, an intermediary in creation, and at times even the highest angelic being, while still distinguishing the Logos from the supreme God. though still calling the Logos the deuteros theos (the second deity).^[5] The Gospel of John therefore did not introduce the concept of the Logos into history for the first time. It inherited a term that already possessed a rich philosophical and Jewish background and applied it to Jesus in a distinctively Christian way. John's most significant development comes in John 1:14, where the preexistent Logos through whom creation occurred is said to have “become flesh.”

What is Theos?

The next important term in John 1:1 is theos, the ordinary Greek noun for “god” or “deity.” Unlike a proper name, theos is a common noun whose precise force depends upon its grammatical and literary context. The word appears twice in John 1:1, but not in exactly the same form. In the second clause, John writes ho logos ēn pros ton theon, “the Logos was with God.” Here theon is the accusative form of theos, and it is preceded by the definite article ton. The change from theos to theon is grammatical rather than theological, since the preposition pros governs the accusative case. Thus, ton theon refers to the God with whom the Logos is said to exist in relationship.

The construction changes significantly in the final clause: kai theos ēn ho logos, literally, “and theos was the Logos.” Here theos is in the nominative case and appears without the definite article. Meanwhile, ho logos, “the Logos,” retains the article. This construction identifies theos as the predicate describing the Logos rather than simply equating the Logos with the same referent designated by ton theon in the preceding clause. The absence of the article does not by itself require the translation “a god,” since Greek frequently uses anarthrous predicate nouns in this position. Rather, the grammatical construction allows theos to characterize what the Logos is. This is why Ernst Haenchen renders the final clause, “and divine [of the category divinity] was the Logos,” distinguishing the Logos from the God with whom he exists while nevertheless attributing divinity to him.

This distinction is central to the structure of John 1:1. The Logos is first distinguished from God through the statement that he was pros ton theon, “with God,” and is then characterized as theos. John therefore uses the same noun in two grammatically different constructions, first to identify the God with whom the Logos existed and then to describe the nature or status of the Logos himself. Haenchen emphasizes precisely this distinction, arguing that theos and ho theos were not interchangeable expressions in this context and interpreting the final clause as describing the Logos as “divine” rather than identifying him straightforwardly with ho theos. In short: the Logos is with the God, belongs to the category of divinity, but is distinct from the God.

Is YHWH Alone Theos?

When I tell Christians that, according to John, Jesus belongs to the category of theos, they often see this as a concession that Jesus is identical with YHWH, the god of the Israelites. This stems from their dogmatic assumption that monotheism is true and that it is communicated throughout the pages of the Bible. For them, YHWH exhausts the category of theos; therefore, if Jesus is said to belong to the category of theos, then Jesus must be identical with YHWH. This presupposition can be seen clearly, for example, in Daniel B. Wallace’s Greek Grammar: Beyond the Basics. Here, Wallace agrees that theos in John 1:1c emphasizes “the nature of the Word, rather than his identity,” but goes on to say, “Such an option does not at all impugn the deity of Christ. . . . In this second translation, ‘divine’ is acceptable only if it is a term that can be applied only to true deity.”^[6] The assumption Wallace brings to the table is purely theological and is not supported by the text of John itself. He assumes that only YHWH can be said to possess “true deity” and, thus, that for Jesus to be divine is for him to be identical with YHWH in essence.

But monotheism is an idea altogether foreign to the text of the Bible, including the New Testament. At best, what can be said of the authors of the NT is that they align much more closely with henotheism—that is, they believe in the existence of many gods, but only YHWH is seen as the supreme deity. As the apostle Paul puts it, “Indeed, even though there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as in fact there are many gods and many lords—yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things...”^[7] Paul does not deny that these deities exist, but rather denies that they are worthy of the honor and glory given to YHWH, affirming that YHWH alone is the supreme deity. Paul elsewhere makes reference to a being whom he calls “the god of this world,”^[8] commonly understood by theologians to be a reference to Satan. Furthermore, he, along with the author of 1 Peter, makes reference to “powers” (Greek: dynamis) that exist in the heavenly places^[9]—a word that, in traditional Greek literature, is used even for gods such as Athena.^[10]

One of the best examples in the New Testament of how YHWH alone does not exhaust the category of theos is found in a later chapter of the Gospel of John itself. In the tenth chapter, Jesus’ Jewish interlocutors confront him, saying, “It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you but for blasphemy, because you, though only a human, are making yourself God.”^[11] However, I would argue that, as in John 1:1c, the word theon (translated as “God”) should instead be rendered “divine” or “of the category of divinity,” so that what Jesus’ interlocutors are saying is, “You, though only human, are making yourself divine.” This view is also defended by Dr. Daniel O. McClellan, as seen in his YouTube video A Common Mistranslation in John 10:33. Following this accusation, Jesus says to his accusers, “Is it not written in your law, ‘I said, you are gods’? If those to whom the word of God came were called ‘gods’—and the scriptures cannot be annulled—can you say that the one whom the Father has sanctified and sent into the world is blaspheming because I said, ‘I am God’s Son’?”^[12] Jesus here interprets Psalm 82 as identifying the Jewish people as the subject of God’s statement, “I said, you are gods” (Greek: theoi). If the Jewish people can be called theoi merely because the word of God was given to them, how much more can Jesus, whom John identifies as himself the Word of God, be called theos? Yet in both instances—whether referring to Jesus or to his Jewish interlocutors—the text does not identify either as being ontologically identical with YHWH.

Conclusion

While John 1:1 is often touted by apologists as definitive proof that Jesus is God, as we have demonstrated from both the historical and literary contexts, no such claim can be established from the text itself. Rather, the Gospel of John portrays Jesus as a divine being, though not as YHWH himself. John consistently presents Jesus in a subordinate relationship to God, and it would seem that the author conceives of Jesus in terms resembling the Logos figure found in the writings of Philo of Alexandria, or something analogous to it. If one wishes to argue for the Trinity, that argument must therefore extend beyond the pages of John, as I would conclude that such a doctrine represents a post-biblical philosophical development. John 1:1, by itself, is simply inadequate to establish the claim that Jesus is God.