Oeste
Well-Known Member
Yes there was a lot of obfuscation in the first 57 posts.
Yes there was, but I believe the obfuscation started with the Lesson (A) and extended through Lesson (E).
But this whole thread has been entertaining with bad Greek grammar , pseudo-meanings ("count nouns" which for some reason, despite request, are never defined), and even an alternate, revisionist history where the entire early Christian world is cast not only as Arian but truly polytheistic in their theology.
So the Watchtower claims there were early Christian gods running all over the place, not because of anything in the historic record, not because of scripture, but because of their 'analysis' of Greek grammar!
If that isn't historical revisionism, I don't know what is. It was also a great exercise in theological homographs, where words like "a god" are assigned totally different meanings. The aberrant meaning is then placed into the mouths of early Christians by the Watchtower. It's how history gets changed.
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As a general rule, nouns are either Definite (identity, known entity..."the cow"), Indefinite (one of a class of others, unknown specific entity..."a cow"), or Qualitative (essence or nature—not identity).
Like flesh in John 1:14, theos in John 1:1c is qualitative...the Word became flesh not "the flesh".
We don't write "God is a love" (indefinite love) or "God is the love" (where we make love definite) “ο θεος αγαπη εστιν”, so at 1 John 4:8 love is qualitative.
At John 1:1c we find theos is an anarthrous pre-verbal predicate nominative (a predicate nominative simply describes the category or class to which the subject belongs). So the Word belongs to the category theos (God) as to his essence or nature, and not to His personal identify as it would with a definite noun (see definition of Definite, above).
Quite simply, John place theos in the emphatic position at 1:1c (see post #71) which makes "everything God was the Word was" and any "a god" rendering improbable. In fact, "a god" becomes impossible when we consider the first clause (the clause the WT would like us to forget) because "In the beginning the Word was"... which means the Word already existed "In the beginning" and is eternal.
And of course the WT's argument regarding clause 2 (If Jesus is God, how can he be with God) holds no weight against the traditional historic church because we are not Sabellian in our Christology. Jesus is a separate distinct person within the Godhead, not a separate distinct God as the Witnesses proclaim.