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John,
This is a favorite ploy of the (JW's) Jehovah's Witnesses. The fact is, their
founder knew enough Greek to be dangerous. It is true that there is no
indefinite article in Greek, but the fact is that Greek grammar does
not require an definite article when we are dealing with two nouns of the
nominative case when they are linked by any form of the verb "to be". Usually,
the second of the two nouns receives the article.
The Greek reads: kai Theos en ho Logos or God
was the Word because (in Greek) the noun declensions determine
whether a word is (the subject or an object) in a sentence rather then
the order of the words in a sentence.
The order is not material. In this case, one definite article was needed.
The sentence, in Greek, could be scrambled in any order such as:
Kai Logos en ho Theos = and Word was the God
Kai ho Theos en Logos = and the Word was God
Any other combination thereof, the reader would have understood
the meaning. Usually the article is dropped before the noun, which comes
before the verb!!
Having said that, the early Church outside of Jerusalem spoke and read
Greek.
The documents of the Council of Nicaea in (325) A.D. were all written in Greek.
This was the Council which defined the Trinity and excommunicated Arius.
Arius, like the Jehovah's Witnesses, believed and taught that Jesus was, not eternal God,
but a created demi-god.
All these people understood Greek; they would not have gotten this part
wrong. The Greek Orthodox still read the same text in Greek today. None
of them understand it to mean:
the Word was a God
Beyond that there is the weight of the rest of Scripture. Here are a just
a few Scripture passages:
16 And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was
manifested in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen by angels, preached
among the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up in glory.
1 Timothy 3:16 |
8 But to the Son He says: "Your throne, O God, is forever and ever;
a scepter of righteousness is the scepter of Your Kingdom".
Hebrews 1:8 |
9 For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily;
Colossians 2:9 |
But the JW's have a habit of trying to play with the Greek. In their 1956
version of the New World Translation, the footnotes for one verse went so
far as to invent a new tense. They do this, of course, because they simply
can't get around the text. Once they were called on the carpet for this,
they changed the footnote.
They build their Christology on a few select verses. For example:
15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.
Colossians 1:15 |
They then pasted it into to their theology, without the benefit of Sacred
Tradition and ignoring the rest of Scripture. Even the Old Testament prophecies need to be twisted by them in order
to make it fit their Christology.
6 For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government
will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Isaiah 9:6 |
Further, they make the same fatal flaw our Protestant brothers do: they
try and use the Bible, which is a collection of books that the Catholic Church
discerned to be inspired, to condemn the teachings of the Church.
The JW's insist that the Church fell into apostasy by the second century,
but the Bible was not canonized as we know it until
the fourth century, so they are claiming to use an inspired text which was declared inspired
by what they call an apostate Church. This is doesn't make sense on any
philosophical level whatsoever.
Well, I hope this helps.
God Bless you and Happy New Year,
John DiMascio
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