Clearing Up the Articulars - Proper Understanding of the "Definite" Article, and Defense of the Deity of Christ

Hello friends,

I want to go back to the subject of articles and their use in the Greek. I'm going to briefly describe the subject and a proper conclusion to it, then I'll give you a more extensive article on the matter to reference.

Now, as I discovered for myself, the use of the definite article (eg. "the") works different than it does in English. I believe I referenced this in an earlier blog entry, though I need to make a few appendages.

Now, the example I used was how if you are not careful, and do not have sufficient knowledge of how Greek words, you can make a bad mistake, and by Galatians 1:9 you would become ἀνάθεμα. And I'd prefer this didn't happen to you, so let's be clear.

I used John 1:1 as an example of the mistake that can occur.

(1) Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος.

Here I underlined all the words referring to God and Christ, along with their respective definite articles. λογος is word, and θεος is God, though many make the mistake of assuming that the absence of the definite article means that it indicates an indefinite by default. That is, if I said ὁ λόγος, you take it to mean, "The word." But when you just see λόγος, the faulty beginning student (such as myself) would take it to mean "a word."

Now let's use that stretch of logic again. You have an instance of τον θεον in that verse, and you might take it to mean "the God," though when you jump over and see θεος, because there is no article (the ὁ), you would assume "a God." Then you go through and translate it, and you wind up with this apostate rendering:

"In a beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the word was a god."

So, were the Jehovah's Witnesses right then?

Well actually, no. There are two mistakes made in this assumption:

First, there is no indefinite article in Greek. They have no way of saying, for example, "a dog," "a cat," or "a god." If the Greek speakers wanted to be unspecific, one way is to use a form of the word τις (tis). Even this, it's vague yet specific at the same time, and its common English equivalent is something like "A certain man," "a certain person," "a particular city." There are a few other ways of implying what would be an indefinite article in English, but a lack of article does not mean indefinite article.

Second, there is no definite article in Greek. I just threw you for a loop, didn't I? :) Now this was the mistake that I made, and the reason why I wrote this, but once you understand this, you can understand how the article plays into understanding Greek. There is no definite or indefinite article; just an article. The article serves for purposes other than being definite, such as the following (not comprehensive listing):

--It may indicate the subject of the sentence.
--It may be placed to put stress on an item, or to draw attention.

In the absence of an article, one of the following might occur:
--It may indicate an appropriate use of an indefinite article, though not always. This should be done carefully.
--It may be qualitative, concerning a characteristic
--It may determin the predicate in some cases.

Let's look back at John 1:1 a minute.

...καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος. (and the word was God).
-and--God--was---word

You'll notice that this time, I underlined only a small part of each word, and I placed the English renderings below. Now here's where some other knowledge is handy; word order does not indicate meaning. The correct translation is not, "And God was the Word." In this particular clause, both the word "God" and the word "Word" are nominative. Without getting too detailed, you typically change up the ending of the nouns and adjectives to indicate their role in a sentence (subject, relation, direction, object, etc.), and for these two nouns, the ος at the beginning indicates that they are nominative, stand-alone subjects. So which one is the subject? If you consider the rules given above, it's the one with the article. In particular instances, the subject may be indicated by its particular ordering in the sentence, but here it simply isn't clear unless by the article.

Some may still object, but then we could ask the question, "Why isn't it that we insert an indefinite article before the word "beginning?"

(1) Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος.

The underlined bit there, en archae, translates into "In the beginning," though that word "en" is not an article. In that first clause, en arche aen ho logos, if we assumed that the absence indicates indefinite, would end up translating, "In a beginning was the word." Not correct. Is there more than one beginning? This is my personal opinion, I will not say this is true, but perhaps John is de-emphasizing "the beginning" in order to magnify and draw attention to "the Word." Greek language involves variations of emphasis, and I can see where you would pay more attention to "ho logos" because between it and "archae," "ho logos" has the article.

Also note that just because there is an article, doesn't mean you must insert an article. Let's take John 1:1 again.

(1) Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος.

That phrase, should you decide that the article always requires the, would then read: "And the word was with the God" instead of just "and the word was with God." Think of the article as a pointing finger, creating emphasis. Think of this as if I was reading the passage out loud, and as I read the word "God," I point upwards, meaning God.

Now think about the mess you would have if you translated John 1:1 with the bad assumptions that I made here.

"In a beginning was the Word, and the Word was with the God, and the Word was a God."

The arguments can get technical, and there are yet still objections, but if there is any doubt that Jesus Christ is indeed God, here's a few verses to provide a contextual argument in the book of John itself:

John 1:15 - John testifies concerning him. He cries out, saying, "This was he of whom I said, 'He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me." (this is important when you consider that John the Baptist was older than Christ by about six months)
John 8:58 - "Before Abraham was, I am." (And as the crowds remarked, "You're not even 50!")
John 14:9 - "Jesus said to him, "Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; how can you say, 'Show us the Father '?" (A very large claim, when you consider that God's holiness means there is no one like Him; Jesus is stepping through that veil and saying, "I am just like Him," meaning He is God)

Just reading through John 1:1-18, or the whole book of John for that matter, which I wrote about earlier, you'll see that John was completely convinced that Jesus Christ was indeed God, and God's greatest revelation to mankind. So if you consider the context that John 1:1 is in, it is most definitely saying that Jesus is God.

No worries my friends. You are not preaching a different Gospel, and you are not αναθεμα (anathema) :) You may exit this blog reassured that your Lord and Savior, by grammatical and contexual arguments, is indeed who He says He is.

Sola Scriptura!

Jake

PS - If you want some more technical information on articles in Greek, go here.