On the Correct Noun Classification for the Predicate in John1:1c

Because the unarticulated predicate QEOS at John 1:1c is a count (singular), common, concrete noun, then the context of the Greek text will determine if an English noun used in the translation should be articulated, and, if so, which article the predicate will take, whether definite or indefinite. The context disallows that we take the predicate in 1:1c to be definite, for QEOS in 1:1c is “with TON QEON” (“the God,” “the [true] God”), and cannot be hO QEOS. The anarthrous predicate QEOS in 2 Corinthians 1:21, however, is a common, count (singular), definite, concrete noun; nonetheless, there would not have been a change in meaning for that predicate even had it been modified by a definite article in the Greek text hO [estin} CRIMAS hHMAS QEOS; (“he who . . . anointed us is God”), because the anarthrous QEOS is here apparently the semantic equivalent of “Jehovah.” We cannot hold that we should ignore context in order that we might insist, “It is the syntax of the predicate at 2 Corinthians 1:21 that makes us choose between either 1) an indefinite QEOS (“a god”), on the one hand, or 2) a syntactically effected transformation of QEOS from a count noun into purely the semantic equivalent of an adjective, namely, “divine,” on the other hand.” Both semantics numbered as 1) and 2) in this paragraph are wrong per context for translation of QEOS at 2 Corinthians 1:21; it is the context for QEOS in that text that makes us look for the identity of the one who a) guarantees the Corinthian believers their fellowship with Christ and b) anoints them. He is identified as “God” in the preceding verse.

If a translator wrongfully asserts that the indefinite article “a” cannot grammatically belong in English translation as modification for the predicate in John 1:1c because of the syntax in John 1:1c, then it follows that consistent application of his criterion will result in his selecting for English translation some English noun for the predicate, one that will not logically take an indefinite articulation for the noun he will use as the predicate in the translation, this for expressing the theology that the translator thinks is in the context of 1:1c. Such a translator has limited himself to three classifications of nouns from which he might select: 1) a noun that is a personal name; 2) a noun that is a common, non-count, concrete noun; or 3) a noun that is a common, non-count, abstract noun. Each of the three alternatives is anti-Scriptural, and two would, if he would use either one of them, make him guilty of an absurd translation as well. Some translators seem to have it that the predicate in John 1:1c might still be rendered “God,” but somehow we should understand that it has a purely qualitative meaning. Does not their argument amount to something else they might have asserted, namely, that the adjective QEIOS (“divine”) equally as well might have been in the Greek text for the predicate, this so that literal English translation at 1:1c would then have read as 
“. . . and the Logos was divine”?

Well, such a translation "divine" for the predicate noun happens to present the truth about the Logos’ nature, because the Logos is a divine being, a god. Many of us who are not trinitarians, however, object to the translation principle employed for the selection of “divine,” and object to the anti-Scriptural restriction that only one being qualifies for the description “divine.” But if we think that syntax for a predicate Greek noun that is a common, count (singular), concrete noun can have such a semantically transformative effect upon it, then we have mistakenly made a translation principle, one that makes for some semantic effects that context does not demand we make, and may in fact disallow. For example, at John 3:29, will we translate NUMFIOS ESTIN as “. . . is bridegroom-ish / bridegroom-ly”? Will we have John 4:19 as “. . . are prophetical”? John 8:44a as “. . . was murderous”? John 8:44b as “. . . is false”? John 9:8 as “. . . was beggarly”? John 9:17 as “. . . is prophetical”? John 10:2 as “. . . is thievish and brigand-ish”? John 10:13 as “. . . is wage-motivated”? John 12:6 as “. . . was thievish”? John 18:37a, b as “. . . are kingly/royal”? At James 4:14, “appearing for a little while” is modification for the predicate ATMIS (“mist”) and is not modification for the implied subject “you”; therefore, the predicate cannot be thought to have become syntactically transformed into a semantic properly expressible by an adjective, so that in translation we should read “misty”; no, but ATMIS must keep its count-noun status in translation so that we read “a mist”: “. . . for you are a mist appearing for a little while.” At James 5:17, hOMOIOPAQHS hHMIN ("of like passions to us" NW) is a phrase modifying the precopulative, anarthrous predicate ANQRWPOS in the English translation of the Greek sentence "Elijah was a man with feelings like ours"(NW). It would not be properly translated if we were to make the translation to read "Elijah was manly, of feelings like ours." ANQRWPOS is a common, count (singular), concrete noun, and is at James 5:17 a count noun predicate that must be translated by use of a count noun so that it can thereby accept its modification by the phrase "with feelings like ours."  We see in the Greek text at Galatians 4:1 hO KLHRONOMOS NHPIOS ESTIN  (". . . the heir is a babe"); the predicate is here not with a pejorative semantic, which, were such discernible in the context, we might then have given the predicate noun its implied adjectival modification, such as in a paraphrastic translation like ". . . the heir is a childish person, someone immature in his thinking."

Were we to grant that syntax alone signals a semantically transformative effect on QEOS at John 1:1c, this so that it is not even grammatically possible for that predicate to have, in English translation, the modification made by an indefinite article, then we would have tightened the restriction of alternatives even further, for then there are only two other semantic alternatives that might be used in English for rendering the Greek predicate noun in John 1:1c where we see that the predicate is used non-metaphorically. Such translation alternatives for the predicate noun would then be made by nouns that cannot make use of the indefinite article in English translation. We will show next how these restrictions are so.

For English translation -- and for preservation therein of the new semantic that supposedly resulted when an anarthrous predicate QEOS was paired with the singular, personalistic subject (the Logos) --, one translation procedure that needs exploring is for us to see what semantic is presented when the translation text in 1:1c is given the common, non-count, abstract noun “godship.” (In Greek, “godship” is QEOTHS.) We will analyze this below. It is, however, the only semantic effect the trinitarian translator has left himself, this for a meaning that does not necessarily admit to the possible existence of a plural number of gods/divine beings – but more about that below. First, though, we will explore whether or not use in translation of a common, count (singular), abstract noun comports logically with the restriction that accurate translation cannot signal the existence of divine beings, gods.

When the translator avers, ‘It is grammatically impossible to employ any indefinite articulation in any English translation at John 1:1c,' then he has also shut the door on any semantic that might have been available through use of a common, count (singular), abstract noun – whatever that might have been --, this inasmuch as a common, count (singular), abstract noun can grammatically take either the indefinite or definite articles in an English translation for such a noun. At 1:1c, however, such a noun would require an impersonal Logos for the subject; it would assert that the Logos is an impersonal agency in God’s being. Indeed, then, per his "lights," what noun classifications are left that Trinitarian translator for his rendering an English translation of 1:1c that does not contradict his Trinitarianism? He should see that he would be left with asserting theologically wrongfully

1) that QEOS is, at 1:1c, with the semantic of a common, non-count, concrete noun (common, we say, and functions as such when it does not, per context, function as the semantic equivalent of a personal name, for in the case that it should function as the semantic equivalent of a personal name, then it would not have the semantic of a common noun, and then should always be written in English translation with an initial capital “G”); also non-count, we say, for where there is a noun of the classification that we have in view now, for then that noun is neither singular nor plural in number, but is non-count; (N.B. We recognize that it is nonsensical to speak, for example, of “a clothing,” or to speak of “clothings.” Likewise, then, it is nonsensical to speak of “a God” for translation of QEOS when the common, count, concrete noun QEOS is, per context, truthfully seen to have the semantic of a personal name; in those instances, QEOS cannot be written in English translation as “a God” because we cannot factually speak of “a Jehovah.” We can imagine that in certain contexts -- for example, those in which personal names, which are non-count nouns and are usually used in a non-count sense, may be used in a counterfactual manner. A counterfactual context would allow us to write in English a personal name with a count, indefinite sense, such that it would require that an indefinite article be used for good English translation, as in “Such a Moses might have done what the Moses of God’s Word never did do”); concrete noun, we say, for when the noun has reference to something ‘out there,’ an ontologically existing thing;

or else to assert (again theologically wrongfully):

2) that QEOS is here with the semantic of a common, non-count, abstract noun.

Either assertion for 1:1c is unscriptural and anti-Scriptural. Number 1 above, where we consider if it is possible to have at 1:1c the common, count (singular), concrete noun QEOS with the semantic of a personal name (namely, “Jehovah”), must be seen as anti-Scriptural at 1:1c because it is not true to say “The Logos is Jehovah”; rather, the Logos is with Jehovah, with “the God,” 1:1b), the One who elsewhere is identified in the Prologue (1:1-18) as “the Father”; cf. John 8:54 “It is my Father who glorifies me, he who you say is your God.” Number 2 above is also unscriptural, and because it is also illogical to declare for the person of the Logos “The Logos is godhood, godship,” then that declaration is also anti-Scriptural. Historic (Scriptural) usage of QEOS plainly has it as a concrete noun, having the same concreteness or ontological reality as we recognize for a shoe, a cloth, a person, a dog, etc. If, however, a translator were mistakenly to take QEOS at John 1:1c for a non-count reference to that which is non-literal, not an ontological reality, then by definition that is his taking it to be a non-count, abstract noun reference. And then it follows that that translator thinks to himself that he is justified in his refusal to use the indefinite article for modifying his English translation of QEOS in that passage. Is he proceeding in a way that presents us with a logically possible metaphysic? No, for then he should be guilty of the logical fallacy of the reification of the abstract, the misplaced concretion.

Poetic license can allow a hunter to hold up a killed duck and say, “This duck is meat on our dinner table.”  “Meat” is a non-count, concrete noun used here as a metaphorical predicate for a subject that is a being.  There will be nothing on the table that will give the percept of a (dead) duck qua (dead) duck, and a real duck is more than the part taken from it in order that that part should be literal meat on a dinner table.  Illogical thought need not intrude so as to prevent those at the table from coming to know reasonably what kind of meat is on the table; logical analysis, if available/possible, cannot prevent -- but rather can help to cause -- accurate cognition that what is present on the table is meat taken from a duck, a part of a killed duck, which part, I should like to think, has been cooked. The hunter's use of the predicate “meat,” though, was reference to the duck that was killed, this so that part or parts of it may be eaten in a meal. But the (dead) duck qua (dead) duck – the feathered corpse of a duck -- is not identical to the meat that will be taken from the duck and placed on the table.  In the event, the meat on the table is just an edible part of the duck, which part the hunter had earlier predicted should, as a part, become in time a percept on a dinner table; until such should transpire, the hunter may reference the duck metaphorically by use of the predicate "meat" as though the predicate noun had made real identification of the whole duck as a whole duck. He has used "meat" to stand in for the whole, this even though the whole (dead) duck as a whole (dead) duck will not become literally present as an ontological reality on his dinner table. (And neither should we be pleased to see a dead duck as a dead duck – the feathered corpse of a duck – on the table before us.)  Likewise, then, we cannot conclude that the apostle John used a predicate QEOS at John 1:1c as though it might function as a predicative non-count, concrete noun for naming only part of what the Logos is, as though QEOS might there refer predicatively not to what the Logos really is in the entirety of his being, but merely serve as predication for identifying only part of what the Logos is.  Indeed, then, to what might QEOS here have pointed us so that we should see only an uncountable yet ontologically existing part of the Logos to which 1:1c might have invited our consideration?  And yet that is the question we should have to ask ourselves were we to agree that QEOS, as an unarticulated, pre-verbal predicate, does no more than to name not a countable, concrete part of a person -- that it somehow names an uncountable yet concrete part of the Logos, that the predicate has somehow taken on the semantic of a non-count, concrete noun, a classification of nouns in which we find the following examples: "clothing,” “butter,” “footwear,” “gold,” “meat,” and “water,” but, of course, never “a/the person.”  There is no Greek syntax that transforms the semantic that a certain count, concrete noun may have in the Greek text into a different semantic that is carried either

1) by a certain non-count, concrete noun used in sensible, English translation, where context – context here as our knowledge of the world – must also comport with a meaning that is in compliance with the predicate's ontology, which would then be indicated as something that is discontinuous, granular, made of discrete but similar units, as is true for sand and furniture; or goes for indicating that the referent’s ontology is a continuous, seamless substance, as is true for water, wine, air, etc.); or

2) by a non-count, abstract noun.

Now, we may refer to a plural number of jackets -- "jackets" is a count (plural), concrete noun -- as some articles of clothing. ("Clothing" is a non-count, concrete noun.) We may also refer to the jackets as clothes. (E.g., “See the clothes piled up over there – those three jackets? Please take those articles of clothing with you when you go.”) There is merely a semantic difference – not an ontological difference – declared in the ways we can collectively refer to them. It is part of the meaning of “clothing,” “sand” and “furniture” that those words denote discrete units. We have implied no ontological distinction that must, in context of the example sentences given immediately above in this paragraph, be recognized as existing between the things referenced by the words “jackets,” “clothing,” and “clothes.” The three words are being used literally. So, there may be ontological entities–note the plural number! -- that are not ontologically dissimilar, this so that they may be named (i.e., logically subsumed under a certain given reference) by a plural, count, concrete noun (e.g., shoes, clothes) or by a non-count, concrete noun that connotes discrete units (e.g., footwear, clothing). It is not syntax, though, that is able to make a common, non-count, concrete noun (e.g., “footwear”) able to range over a plural number of metaphysically indistinguishable units each one individually nameable in turn by one and the same count (singular) , concrete noun (e.g., “shoe”) or collectively with the plural, count noun (e.g., “shoes”). For John 1:1c to support trinitarianism, we should have to have different vocabulary and new theology at that place. Trinitarians aver for 1:1c a use of QEOS supposedly semantically equivalent to a non-count, concrete noun that has as part of its meaning that which somehow -- O Absurdity, Trinity is thy name! -- may yet non-metaphorically connote a plural number of entities where each entity is defined as a really distinguishable (!) person. And where we have a plural number of persons, we may see a basis whereby some of them may meet requirements necessary for membership in a certain class god [sic] composed of those persons.

We may be interested to examine the doctrine of Trinity philosophically, because a few Trinitarians, like the one who who asserted "God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are one class in that the Three of Them are all God and Lord Themselves" (See http:www.bible-knowledge.com/trinity-god-jesus-holy-spirit) believe that there is a class capable of having three God persons Themselves (!) (the Father (apparently), Jesus, and the Holy Spirit) as members in a class that the author of the quote left unnamed here, but that they belong to this class because "[they] are all [of them] God," but not 'they are all of them Gods.' What, though, might have prevented the author of the quote from naming the class to which he refers 'the class God'?  

Will we really be epistemologically justified should we hold that the statement "There is the class God" is statement that comports with the terms that define Trinitarianism"? No, the class God cannot logically obtain under all the terms that constitute Trinitarianism as popularly imagined. This is so because one of the things that cuts against their presentation for a class God is the imagination that there really is a plural number of Almighty persons  (God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit) -- that each person supposedly owns, as the assertion goes, the selfsame set of those attributes necessary to our defining an Almighty, God person; each putative God person's identity is established on the basis that his personhood is informed with the selfsame attributes as the attributes informing the other two persons. The theology enunciated by the author of the quote given in the previous paragraph is this: 'There really are three persons in that class having one member, the class God, so that no instantiation of the class is a God, but rather is God!' Supposedly, then, instancing the class God yields to view the one and only member, God.  But the theory of class logic actually disallows that the class God might also have in it any real persons, but that the class God devolves to definition that there is in the class the one and only set of properties qua set of properties that is brought to view by our power of abstraction for listing each attribute/property in the set. "God" in Trinitarianism logically devolves to the position that "God" is a noun that does not have any person(s) for its referent; however, nowhere in all of holy Scripture do we find such a use for "God"; nowhere in all of holy Scripture is there a use of "God" that, until formulation of the doctrine of Trinity, had remained a mysterious use of the word in Scripture. 

We must not hold that there is no set of attributes that really is essential to what constitutes/informs the identity/ontology of some real person, but that set cannot be the selfsame set of attributes that supposedly ranges across a plural number of real persons in their ownership of it. Each real person has his own identity/ontology/nature, uniquely his own set of attributes. Mind, for example, is an attribute/property of personhood, but the selfsame mind cannot belong to more than one person.

Now, if there is a class that might have in it members who, we conclude, are equally competent in their attributes/ontology -- we conclude that they are without beginning and are immortal, that each one is equally able to send forth from himself whatever measure of power is needed for accomplishing whatever he wants (e.g., each one capable of being a creator of worlds and living creatures), each one absolutely just and holy --, then there is nothing more needed which might prevent us from declaring that the class we are considering has a plurality of members in it, that this is the class God, and that any instantiation of that class is a God. Such a conclusion is anti-Scriptural. 

Let us now take another, closer look at Trinitarians' translation of John 1:1c ". . . and the Word was God." Now our examination of it will incorporate besides personalism a linguist's point of view. What do we find? There is no discrete entity that can be named X (i.e., logically and literally can be subsumed with other entities under a certain given reference X) where X is a predicative, non-count, concrete noun supposedly able to range equally over a plural number of literal (concrete), ontologically dissimilar entities when that dissimilarity (absence of certain commonly shared characteristics) for the entities necessarily has the effect of denying a common functionality that each entity in a collection of the entities should otherwise have to participate in order to qualify for the name X. “Sand” is a non-count, concrete noun that is applicable as a label for collectively naming the billions of pieces (grains) of sand, just because each discrete grain of sand does have pretty much the same function as any other grain of sand, and for that reason does not invite us to focus on dissimilarities. True, a grain of sand may have come from an ontologically dissimilar existent as compared to the next grain of sand: a grain of sand may not be informed with the same chemistry, and for that reason it might not have the same coloration, size, and shape identical to the next grain of sand; however, all grains of sand in a certain collection of them may have essentially the same function (e.g., each grain of sand in a certain collection of them equally participates in the formation of a sandy beach that the collection, as a whole, makes) arising out of enough similarities so that they may be  collectively referenced by "sand" despite properties that may just non-necessarily, from the perspective of their function, happen to individuate them from any other grain of sand. Even so, we still see that which suffices for our definition of sand. When, however, we speak of those rational beings who are human beings, we are not speaking of a mind that is identical for each human person, for each human person's mind is a unique mind in a world of human minds, each human mind being grounded in an organism (brain tissue) that is uniquely owned by a rational being. Any rational being that is a free moral agent is, in fact, an irreducible substance of being (a unique person). It is nonsensical, absurd, to refer predicatively either to a single, rational being's (e.g., God's) ontological substance of being or to that owned by any other rational being in a group of rational beings (e.g., the group comprised of gods and humans) by a non-count, concrete noun (see more about this in the next paragraph) that, by word magic, is declared to range equally over any number of persons qua persons -- where the focus is on what justification there is for each existent's identity as a person, on what justification there is for that entity's inclusion in, say, the class Person. And that justification would have to be that each numerically distinguishable entity (instantiation of the class Person) belongs to the class Person if the entity has unique ownership of its rational mind featuring that which goes to the core of personhood, namely, free will; then an entity definable as a person in a world of persons cannot possibly have mind that is identical to another person's mind. Really, then, by virtue of a numerically distinguishable entity's identity as a person are we unsurprisingly saying that each person actually is necessarily, in his own being, uniquely in possession of just his own mind with its free will so that the mind in view here has no instances of its being owned by other members in the class Person. Again, no mind is in any instance a substance of being that is indistinguishably owned, that is to say, no mind can be owned by more than one person. There are a plural number of persons because each rational entity per force owns a mind featuring free will, and moreover that mind he owns is a mind that must be uniquely his own; every rational entity exercising free will is a person, just one person, one rational being owning free will. 

It is not proper to say in English “Gabriel is spirit,” for that sentence would mean that "Gabriel" is a proper name for all the properties that the spiritual kind of body can have. "Gabriel is a spirit," and "God is a spirit" -- indeed, God is the spirit par excellence -- is correct, logical reference to the subjects Gabriel and God in English, though in Greek PNEUMA [ESTIN] hO QEOS should require us to recall what we believe about the heavenly realm in order that we should know better than to write in translation “God is spirit.” The sentence “God, Gabriel, Michael are spirit” has the meaning that "God," "Gabriel," and "Michael" are but proper names (or, in the case of "God" here, semantically equivalent to a proper name) for subjects (ostensibly persons) in the sentence that has the predicate "spirit" as a common noun reference to the selfsame thing. In this English sentence, however, no predicate has been given that really might have made reference to any one of the three subjects' respective set of properties, a set of properties uniquely owned by himself alone, each set having essential and necessary dissimilarities from the other sets in order for the subjects really to be presented logically in the sentence as a group of three persons. Certainly no person qua person can be predicatively labeled in English by the use of "spirit" where use of the word is as a non-count, concrete noun, for that would be absurd, metaphysically nonsensical. "God is spirit" is not correct English translation for PNEUMA ESTIN QEOS, nor correct translation for QEOS ESTIN PNEUMA; rather, "God is a spirit" is correct English translation where "a spirit" uses "spirit" as a concrete, count noun: it presents the semantic in the original Greek sentence here, provided that the context of the Greek sentence also uses QEOS as reference to the Supreme Being, the Almighty God.

Furthermore, there is no entity by itself –- that is to say, no entity considered singly -- that can be named, or literally identified, by reference made by a predicative, non-count, abstract noun. For example, the non-count, abstract nouns “godship” and “humanity” cannot be used for literal, non-metaphorical predicative identification for their respective subjects if those subjects are each of them a rational being. Those predicative, non-count, abstract nouns name no referents that are literal percepts; those nouns do not name things that are ‘out there.’ Trinitarians, in their effort to avoid modalism at John 1:1c, assert a thing about the syntax for John 1:1c that logically devolves to an absurdity, a reification of the abstract, the misplaced concretion. The rational being who is the Logos cannot, then, be literally identical to what we name by the word “godship,” that is to say, the being/person Logos is not godship. Moreover, we cannot Scripturally use the word “godship” to name a set of properties that belongs only to the Almighty God, for “godship” has for its meaning something that is an abstraction for collective reference to a number of properties that, as a bare minimum number of properties, happens to be essential, as Reality has it, to a plural number of rational beings who are gods, and among whom we find the gods Jehovah (the Almighty god), Gabriel, and the Logos (Michael). (Yes, there actually exists the class god!) So, the Logos owns a set of properties that is essential to any person who is a real god, and the Scriptures do reveal the existence of a spiritual realm that has gods – note the plural! -- at home in it. As an amplified paraphrase for John 1:1c, we could translate it as “. . . and the Logos is an owner of godship, is divine.” So, “the Logos” is not just another name that we give all that abstraction we may rightly make and label “godship”; rather, “the Logos” names a real god, a divine being, not an abstraction. Again, the Logos is not godship, but is a god.