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The Lord Our God
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Appendix on John 1:1

The New Testament is written in what is called Koine Greek. Koine means "common," and it is an appropriate term, therefore, to designate the language of the common people in the Graeco-Roman world. The Koine was the language of everyday life, identical to that found in the wills, trade agreements, petitions, and private letters of New Testament times. It was the language of the street, and, as such, differed greatly from the polished Greek of educated writers, who copied in an artificial way the Attic prose of four centuries before.

Thus the Greek of the New Testament does not perfectly follow classical rules of grammar, any more than our own everyday language conforms to the rules set down by English grammarians.

The rules of grammar guide everyday speech, but they do not find their perfect expression in it.

One could not reasonably expect a study of New Testament Greek to furnish invariable rules of grammar, just as one would not study the letters of clerks, say, or of soldiers today to determine accurate rules for the use of our indefinite article. Thus, Walter Bauer has suggested that it is impossible to form binding rules for the use of the Greek article.* The language of the New Testament is flexible and sublime, not grammatically precise. It was written, not for the wise of this world, but for the meek.

[*Gieben, Griechisch-Deutches Worterbuch Zum Neuen Testament, 1928.]

E. C. Colwell’s so-called "rule" is not a rule of grammar of the Koine Greek, but simply an observation of certain characteristics of the New Testament language—an observation most Trinitarians agree has many exceptions. N. Turner (a Trinitarian) sums up Colwell’s case as follows: In Colwell’s count, which is somewhat arbitrary, only 15 articular predicate nouns precede the verb, while 239 follow it, and only 40 anarthrous predicate nouns follow the verb while 99 precede it. Judicious selection among the MS variants may remove some of the exceptions to Colwell’s canon but cannot remove all. So that while the canon may reflect a general tendency it is not absolute by any means; after all, it takes no account of relative clauses or proper nouns, and he has also omitted a considerable class of "qualitative" nouns like that in [GREEK TEXT] moreover, he is the first to admit the lack of objectivity in his method of counting: he professes to include only definite nouns among his anarthrous predicates, and the degree of definiteness is extremely difficult to assess.

And in a footnote he adds: "Paul is the most significant breaker of Colwell’s rule."* To whatever extent Colwell’s observation may be applicable, the emphasis of scriptural understanding is placed upon contextual interpretation, since there is no purely objective way to determine whether a noun is definite or indefinite. Colwell asserts that the anarthrous (used without the article) theos of John 1:1 is definite because a definite theos is applied to Jesus in John 20:28. But it does not follow that every use of theos in regard to Jesus must, therefore, be definite.

[* N. Turner, A Grammar of New Testament Greek, Vol. 3, p. 184, 1963.]

A predicate nominative may be used to indicate the identity of the subject, or to show some quality about the subject. The confession of the eunuch (Acts 8:37), "I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God," identifies the subject. The statement, "God is love," (1 John 4:8) qualifies the subject. If the anarthrous theos of John 1:1 be considered as qualifying the subject, the clause containing it could be translated, "and the Word was like God." In harmony with this, we read that Christ was "the image of God" (2 Cor. 4:4). That this likeness did not extend to exact sameness of nature or being is clearly proven by other scriptures.

Even since the publication of Colwell’s rule, many Trinitarians have continued to emphasize the qualitative interpretation of John 1:1, rather than considering the anarthrous theos definite, as does Colwell. For if the noun is definite, the clause should be translated, "and the Word was the God." But since the Father is the God, this translation would imply that the Word is the Father—an absurdity even to most Trinitarians. To avoid this trap, they differ with Colwell and interpret the noun "god" as qualitative; and once again the meaning of the verse is found to depend on one’s interpretation of the context.

The following quote from William Barclay on John 1:1 is an example of this qualitative application by Trinitarians*:

[*William Barclay, The Gospel of John, (Daily Study Bible Bible Series), Vol. 1, p. 17.]

"Finally John says that the Word was God. There is no doubt that this is a difficult saying for us to understand, and it is difficult because Greek, in which John wrote, had a different way of saying things from the way in which English speaks. When Greek uses a noun it almost always uses a definite article with it. The Greek for God is theos, and the definite article is ho When Greek speaks about God it does not simply say theos; it says ho theos. Now when Greek does not use a definite article with a noun that noun becomes much more like an adjective; it describes the character, the quality of the person. When John said that the Word was God he was not saying that Jesus is identical with God; he was saying that Jesus is so perfectly the same as God in mind, in heart, in being that in Jesus we perfectly see what God is like."

The following is a partial list of Trinitarian authorities on New Testament Greek who wrote before and after Colwell’s rule. All emphasize the qualitative interpretation of the anarthrous theos in John 1:1 and thus disagree with Colwell: William Barclay, Martin Vincent, J. P. Lange, Robert Young, Brook Foss Westcott, Kenneth Wuest, George Turner, Julius Mantey, H. E. Dana, Moulton, James Moffat.