Twisted Scripture: The Mistreatment of the Bible and the Deity of Christ

Twisted-scripture

The gospel is about the person of Christ. If we do not understand the person of Jesus Christ, then we do not understand the good news of our salvation. The Bible affirms that Jesus is truly God and truly Man without confusion, without change, without division, and without separation (Cf. the Council of Chalcedon, 451). This biblical doctrine is theologically termed the hypostatic union.

Because the gospel is about God taking on our humanity to save us from sin, death, and Satan, we must confess that Jesus is God incarnate or God with us as true God and true man (John 1:1-14). Matthew declares: … and his name shall be called Immanuel. The name Immanuel is the Hebrew transliteration of God with us (Cf. Matthew 1:23; Isaiah 7:14). Jesus is God with us. While Scripture teaches this truth about the person of Jesus, there are many who have twisted Scripture and affirmed otherwise. There are numerous texts, however, that declare the person of Christ is co-equal with the Father and the Spirit. Let’s look at a few of them.

 

The Deity of Christ

Jesus takes the personal name of God, I AM (John 8:58); Jesus receives worship (Luke 24:52); Jesus shares the one name of God with the Father and Spirit (Matthew 28:18-20); Jesus is Creator (John 1:3; Colossians 1:16; Hebrews 1:2-3; etc.); Jesus is eternal, having no beginning nor end (Revelation 1:8, 22:13; Cf. Isaiah 44:6); Jesus shares the exact nature of God (John 1:1; Philippians 2:6; Colossians 1:19, 2:9); etc. Even though there are numerous passages revealing the deity of Christ, there are still those who twist and misrepresent key texts of Scripture. They attempt to reinterpret and thereby redefine Jesus. One such reinterpretation is the notion that Jesus is God’s first great creation. According to this view, Jesus is a finite creature like you and I rather than our eternal Creator and Redeemer. This false teaching has been around since the early church through the teachings of Arius. Arius taught that Jesus is a kind of super-creature and not our Creator. What was likely an attempt at preserving the unity of God as the one God, Arius’ logic stripped the Son of His true deity.

Arius’ teaching is still found among groups today such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses. The natural question becomes, “If the church already clarified that Arius’ teaching is false and distorts the plain sense of the Bible, then why is it still taught today?” The answer is that many false views present themselves as balanced and valid teachings of the Bible. Let us look at how the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ Bible translation, the New World Translation (NWT), twists Scripture by taking interpretive liberty with the Greek language. There are many examples, but this article will look at two popular ones, John 1:1 and Romans 9:5.

 

John 1:1

Notice how the New World Translation (NWT) interprets John 1:1: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a god…” The NWT has “the Word was a god,” but this translation is both unwarranted and strange for several contextual reasons. The first reason deals with the authorial context; the second reason deals with the canonical or remote (wider) context; and the third reason deals with the immediate grammatical context.

With regard to the first reason, the Apostle John is a monotheist and holds that the Old Testament is the inspired Word of God. Thus, John neither writes under the assumption of a Polytheist (multiple gods) nor a Greek mythologist (the idea of semi-deities). The idea of a god existing in the beginning with the God is completely foreign to the author’s worldview and the Word of God.

Second, the New World Translation completely overlooks the canonical or remote context. John is referring back to Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth…”. Genesis 1:1 speaks of the one God creating, ordering, and filling the universe according to His perfect will via His speech or word. The Apostle John writes John 1:1 so that it must be interpreted in light of Genesis 1:1. Namely, the Word that took on flesh (John 1:1) is the one God who created the universe (Genesis 1:1).

With this authorial and canonical context, the translator can rightly assess John’s use of the Greek language, which brings us to our third reason. The immediate context demands the statement “and the Word was God” rather than “and the Word was a god.”, Before we examine the NWT’s error, we need a couple of clarifications about the original Greek (Koine Greek). First, a Greek noun without the definite article the may be interpreted in three ways: indefinite (e.g., a god), definite (e.g., the God), or qualitative (e.g., the fullness of God/all the qualities of God). Second, word order in Greek is important for interpretation. With these notations about biblical Greek, let us analyze whether the NWT does interpretive justice to Scripture.

The actual Greek word order is and God was the word. First, the noun God (θεος) does not have an article (the), which means it might be translated a god, the God, or the fullness of God; in addition, the noun God is the direct object, which John sets first in the word order. This means John is emphasizing the direct object, God; John's intention is to emphasize the deity of the subject (the Word). In light of the authorial and wider context mentioned previously, we know that a god is not an option because John is monotheistic and refers back to Genesis 1:1. John is referring to the one God over Israel who rules the universe by His Word. So, we are left with only two options: the God or the fullness of God/divine attributes. Because John’s immediate context makes a distinction between the Word and the God in the previous phrase, i.e., the Word was with God..., the only interpretation of John’s indefinite use of the noun God is all the fullness/qualities of God. Thus, we conclude with one interpretation: … the Word was with God [the Father], and the Word was all the qualities of God/the fullness of God. Under the inspiration of the Spirit, John perfectly expresses how the Father and Son are one yet distinct Persons. God is interpersonal in one being, as opposed to an impersonal being, a being without relation in His divine essence.

 

Romans 9:5

Romans 9:5 is another example: “... The ancestors are theirs, and from them, by physical descent, came the Messiah, who is God over all, praised forever. Amen” Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB). In this context, Paul is expressing his deep desire for ethnic Israel to receive the promised Messiah, yet Paul also recognizes that not all Israel belongs to Israel (v. 6). Let’s observe how the NWT treats this passage. Again, because the interpreters of the NWT are working under Arian assumptions about Christ, they ignore the nearest antecedent/referent in Romans 5:9, which is the Messiah or Christ (ο Χριστος), and add a sharp punctuation between the noun Christ and the noun God. We will see how these interpretive moves support their faulty position but do not support the natural reading of the passage. 

To better grasp the situation, the NWT interprets the verse as follows: “To them the forefathers belong, and from them the Christ descended according to the flesh. God, who is over all, be praised forever. Amen.” As mentioned, this translation inserts a sharp distinction between Christ and God by placing a period for a hard stop and then introducing the Father into the context for the noun God. Neither the hard stop nor the person of Father are explicit in the context; such interpretive moves that assume meaning into the context (asyndetic interpretation) would be the last option and only if the natural reading did not make sense. Rather, the English Standard Version (ESV), along with the Holman Christian Standard Bible (above), rightly connects the noun God back to the nearest antecedent (i.e., the Christ): “To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen” (ESV). The ESV and HCSB honor God’s Word by recognizing the immediate context (Cf. 9:1-3, 5; i.e., the Christ) and the grammatical context. 

As mentioned, while there are numerous plain passages that express the deity of Christ, there are still those who craftily and skillfully twist passages to support unbiblical doctrines, which is the case with the many world religions that define Jesus as something less than God with us, God comes to redeem humanity from sin and death. While much of this article tackles the grammatical situation, which entails basic knowledge of Greek, all of these issues can be fully settled without a background in Biblical Greek or Biblical Hebrew. 

These issues of heretical interpretation are readily resolved through applying basic hermeneutics (i.e., the science and art of interpretation). Understanding the authorial context (e.g., Who is the author? What does the author believe?), the remote context (What is the wider context saying? How does the Bible as a whole inform the specific passage? How are terms used throughout the Bible?), and the immediate context (What did the previous verse say? What do the following verses say? etc.), the reader may come to a firm and sure confrontation with the truth of Scripture. In other words, may we come to Scripture with a humble posture, seeking to understand the sacred text and not to impose our own understanding into the text. In fact, the Spirit of God promises to confront us as we are confronted by the Word of God (2 Cor. 3:12–18).

 

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