Steve's Response to Ed #2 (1/20/06)

Ed,

    I realize that you are keeping very busy in Utah , so there is no real need to apologize about maintaining your blogs.  I am not overly concerned about grammatical and spelling errors in your posts, nor am I trying to impose an unfair standard on you.  The public and academic community have only the basic expectation that if you are going to write about something and you want to be taken seriously, you ought to spell correctly.  But as said before, these mistakes are incidental, minor and not at all what my response was about, it was disappointing that you did not address the real issue of hermeneutics.

    The topic of my response to your post, was not grammar or spelling, but that you misunderstood and misrepresented the Unitarian position on hermeneutics and that you provided no examples or evidence to support your claim.  You should have responded to this, and not switched the issue to grammar, not to mention begging for an interpretation of John 1:18.  Why should anyone answer your question about John 1:18 if you won’t give them the courtesy of answering their questions?  But we are adults and here is an appropriate time to apply Jesus’ precept to ‘give without expecting to get anything back’ (Luke 6:35).

    You ask for a clear explanation of how John 1:18 does not support the Trinitarian thesis that Jesus Christ is God the Son.  (1) In spite of your dogma that the best manuscripts contain theos to read “Only begotten God,” the simple fact is that the evidence indicates that ‘Son’ is the original reading.  It is true that the earliest Greek manuscripts we have read theos but this does not make them the “best” manuscripts, nor the original.  Just because they are early, doesn’t make them the most accurate, so for you to equate ‘ancient’ with ‘best’ is subjective and unwarranted.  Let me quote from the book One God, One Lord by Mark Graeser:

Although it is true that the earliest Greek manuscripts contain the reading “theos,” every one of those texts is of the Alexandrian text type. Virtually every other reading of the other textual traditions, including the Western, Byzantine, Caesarean and secondary Alexandrian texts, read huios, “Son.” The two famous textual scholars, Westcott and Hort, known for their defense of the Alexandrian text type, consider John 1:18 to be one of the few places in the New Testament where it is not correct.

     A large number of the Church Fathers, such as Irenaeus, Clement and Tertullian, quoted the verse with “Son,” and not “God.” This is especially weighty when one considers that Tertullian argued aggressively for the incarnation and is credited with being the one who developed the concept of “one God in three persons.” If Tertullian had had a text that read “God” in John 1:18, he certainly would have quoted it, but instead he always quoted texts that read “Son.”

    That being the case, it is not surprising for Graeser to state, nor for us to conclude that, “The Greek texts vary, but there are good reasons for believing that the original reading is represented in versions such as the KJV” which reads “only begotten Son.”  (2)  This phrase, “only begotten Son,” being used three other times in the Bible, makes sense, has meaning, and has contextual support.  The phrase, “only begotten God” is never used elsewhere in scripture, does not make sense, has no meaning, and has no contextual support, and this would lead us to believe that the original text had “son” and not “god.”  It is more likely that John would have used the same phrase as he did in 3:16, 18 and 1 John 4:9, instead of using a new one (‘only begotten God’) and never using it again.  It is more likely that John would have used a phrase that makes sense rather than one that does not.  Sons are begotten, Gods are not.  What sense or meaning is there in the phrase ‘Only begotten God?’  How can God have a begetting and a beginning?  It is therefore the most intellectually responsible and rational approach to have a begotten Son, rather than a begotten God (and it must be contended that this latter phrase is incoherent and without meaning).

    In addition, contextually, the verse reads properly with ‘son’ and not ‘god.’  The phrase ‘at the Father’s side’ is very important and very telling.  What makes more sense that there is a ‘Son’ at the Father’s side or a ‘God’ at the Father’s side?  The answer is obvious.  The context demands that the original word is ‘Son’ as it is connected with ‘Father.’  Further, ‘No one has ever seen God,’ but the ‘only Son…has made him known.’  To insert ‘God’ for ‘Son’ would make this senseless…it would read like this, “No one has ever seen God…but the only God has made him known.”  Who talks like that?  There is no meaning in a phrase like that, it is purely absurd, so it is clear that John is talking  about two different entities, one (the Son) making the other (God) known to humanity. Read both ways, John 1:18 is nonsense with ‘God,’ but perfectly understandable with ‘Son.’  And you can read it and test it for yourself, and there is no anti-Trinitarian presupposition involved.  And lastly, a case can and has been made that the text was changed to support the Trinity, but I don’t feel that needs to be explored in any depth as given the above evidence it does seem obvious that something like that had to happen, for ‘Son’ is the only intelligible reading of the verse.

    Ed, I think that fairly answers the verse and that an unbiased approach would lead one to conclude that John 1:18 does not support the Trinity, the pre-existence of Jesus, or the Deity of Jesus.  Now, I’ve done my best to answer your question, and I would hope that you would spend more time on the hermeneutic question, and correct your misunderstanding in this area so that Dan and Danny, Lee and Anthony are portrayed accurately and fairly.  As always, I appreciate your time and attention.

Steve