Christ: The True God & Only-Begotten Son
Table of Contents
The following excerpt is taken from the monumental work titled The Incarnate Christ and His Critics: A Biblical Defense, authored by Robert M. Bowman Jr. & J. Ed Komoszewski, published by Kregel Academic, Grand Rapids, MI, 2024, Chapter 23: Jesus as “God” in John’s Writings, Part 3: The Name of Jesus: Jesus’ Divine Names, pp. 437-442.
In my estimation this is THE best and most comprehensive exposition and defense of the biblical basis for the Deity of Christ. Every serious Trinitarian Christian student of the Holy Bible, apologist, and/or theologian must have this book in the library. All emphasis will be mine.
THE TRUE GOD AND ETERNAL LIFE ( 1 JOHN 5:20 )
At the end of John’s first epistle, we find another statement that at least appears to call Jesus Christ “God”:
And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, in order that we may know the one who is true, and we are in the one who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. This one [houtos] is the true God and eternal life. Little children, guard yourselves from idols. (1 John 5:20–21 LEB)
As with John 20:28, there is little or no debate about the text or the translation of 1 John 5:20; what has been debated is its interpretation. The focal point of this debate is the grammatical antecedent of the pronoun houtos (“this one”), that is, the preceding noun or name to which the pronoun referred. The traditional view, which for the past thirty years or so has also been the near consensus in academic commentaries, is that “his Son Jesus Christ” is the antecedent.25 The main alternative view, which was held by many scholars during the twentieth century, is that the antecedent of houtos is “the one who is true” (lit., “the true one”), that is, the Father. This view that the Father is here called “the true God” received its most careful defense in Murray Harris’s 1992 book on Jesus as God, to which we have already made several references in this chapter.26
Harris makes some important points with which we agree. The pronoun houtos must refer back either to “the true one,” who is the Father, or to “his Son Jesus Christ.” (The pronoun houtos, in its masculine singular form, often refers to persons in John’s writings, which is why several versions translate it as “he” [CSB, ESV, NABRE, NIV, NLT, NRSV].) Furthermore, John is applying the whole expression “the true God and eternal life” to the person referenced by houtos, which means whoever is called “eternal life” here is also called “the true God,” and vice versa.27
Everyone admits that a pronoun’s usual antecedent is the closest preceding name or noun expression that agrees with it in grammatical form. Thus, when we read, “. . . in his Son Jesus Christ. This one is . . . ,” the most natural way of understanding these words is that “this one” (houtos) refers back to “his Son Jesus Christ,” which comes immediately before houtos. In order for “the true God” to refer to the Father, one must skip backward beyond “his Son Jesus Christ” to “the true one” as the antecedent: “. . . and we are in the true one, in his Son Jesus Christ. This one is the true God and eternal life.”
In response to this point, Harris (like others) cites two supposed counterexamples in John’s epistles (1 John 2:22; 2 John 7).
Who is the liar except the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This [houtos] is the antichrist, the one who denies the Father and the Son. (1 John 2:22 NASB)
For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. This [houtos] is the deceiver and the antichrist. (2 John 7 NASB)
Harris’s argument is that in both of these texts, the antecedent is not the immediately preceding noun. In 1 John 2:22, so the argument goes, the antecedent is “the one who denies” (ho arnoumenos), not “Christ” or “Jesus,” and in 2 John 7 the antecedent is “those who do not acknowledge” (hoi mē homologountes), not “flesh” (sarki) or “Jesus Christ.”28 However, in both verses, there is one complex name or nominative expression that is the direct and immediate antecedent of houtos. These complex expressions both happen to be headed by participles functioning as substantives with the article (ho). Thus, in 1 John 2:22 the antecedent of houtos is the whole expression “the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ” (ho arnoumenos hoti Iēsous ouk estin ho Christos). In the clause, “This is the antichrist,” the word this refers to “the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ.” In 2 John 7 the antecedent of houtos is “those who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh” (hoi mē homologountes Iēsoun Christon erchomenon en sarki). In the clause, “This is the deceiver and the antichrist,” this refers to “those who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh.
In 1 John 5:20, on the traditional interpretation, the antecedent of houtos is the compound name “his Son Jesus Christ” (tō huiō autou Iēsou Christō), not just one of the nouns that make up that name. This compound name is in a prepositional phrase that begins with the preposition en (“in”). The expression “the true one” is part of its own prepositional phrase (en tō alēthinō, “in the true one”), which precedes the phrase closest to the pronoun houtos. On the alternative reading of the text, houtos refers to “the true one,” a completely separate name preceding the compound name “his Son Jesus Christ.” Thus, the examples of 1 John 2:22 and 2 John 7 simply do not provide evidence of John using houtos with a more remote antecedent than one that immediately precedes it.
Another argument for construing “the true one” as the antecedent of “this one” is that although John has just mentioned Christ, the true antecedent is whatever was “dominant in the writer’s mind,” and John has referred twice in the verse to “the true one,” showing that he, God the Father, is the person “dominant in John’s mind.”29 Determining the grammatical antecedent of a pronoun on the basis of what is deemed “dominant in the writer’s mind” seems a dubious, potentially subjective approach. Besides, arguably the Son is the “dominant” person in what comes before the pronoun houtos. Note the following outline of that part of 1 John 5:20 (quoting the LEB):
A And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding,
B in order that we may know the one who is true,
Bʹ and we are in the one who is true,
Aʹ in his Son Jesus Christ.
This part of verse 20 is structured in a simple chiasmus (A—B—Bʹ—Aʹ) pattern, so that its first and last lines refer to the “Son” and the middle two lines contain two references to “the one who is true.”
Moreover, the four lines as a whole are about what “the Son of God” has done: he “has come and has given us understanding” for the purpose described. Further emphasizing the focus on the Son is the text’s use of specific, personal language for him (“the Son of God . . . his Son Jesus Christ”) in contrast to the more abstract or descriptive references to “the true one.” These considerations all support the conclusion that in fact the Son is the more “dominant” person (rhetorically, not theologically!) referenced before the pronoun houtos.
Of the thirty-nine occurrences in 1 John of houtos in all grammatical forms, only six, including the text we are discussing, can refer to persons (1 John 2:4, 5a, 22; 4:2; 5:6, 20). Six occurrences are just not enough data on which to base any generalization. In one of the other five (noncontroversial) occurrences, Christ is clearly the referent of houtos (1 John 5:6). In 2 and 3 John, the pronoun occurs nine times, just twice in references to persons (neither happens to refer to Christ). In the Gospel of John, houtos in all forms occurs 239 times, of which 61 refer to persons. Of those 61 personal uses, 38 refer to Christ. It is not surprising that the pronoun refers so often to Jesus, since the Gospel is primarily a narrative about Jesus. What is somewhat surprising is that John never uses houtos in reference to God the Father anywhere in the Gospel or the epistles.30
So far, we have focused on the antecedent of houtos. The other significant issue is the use of the words “eternal life” as part of the composite predicate in the statement, “This one is the true God and eternal life.” As we noted previously, whoever is here called “eternal life” is also called “true God.” Of course, eternal life is closely associated with both God the Father and his Son: God gave his Son so that we may have eternal life (John 3:16); God gave us eternal life in his Son (1 John 5:11). However we exegete 1 John 5:20, we should not minimize the role of either God the Father or his Son Jesus Christ in our having eternal life. That having been said, there is strong evidence that the expression “eternal life” in 1 John 5:20 is part of a description specifically of the Son.
First of all, the epistle begins and ends with a reference to someone as eternal life:
And the life [hē zōē] was revealed, and we have seen and testify and proclaim to you the eternal life [tēn zōēn tēn aiōnion], which was with the Father and was revealed to us. (1 John 1:2 NASB)
This is the true God and eternal life [zōē aiōnios]. (1 John 5:20 NASB)
These are the only two places where John calls someone “eternal life.” In 1 John 1:2 it is clearly the person called “the Word of Life” in 1:1 and who “was with the Father and was revealed to us” (1:2 NASB).31 This person, of course, is the Son, Jesus Christ. If John had wanted to call the Father “eternal life” somewhere, he certainly could have done so. The point is that the parallel between these two statements, which function as “bookends” (an inclusio) for the epistle as a whole, adds strong confirmation to the exegetical evidence that the person John is describing is Christ.
The evidence from the inclusio using “eternal life” at the beginning and end of the epistle cannot be finessed away by pointing out that the Father is called “the living [zōn] Father” (John 6:57).32 This reference comes in the Gospel, does not use the same expression “eternal life” (or even the noun “life”), is not worded as a confessional statement, and does not come in a place in the Gospel comparable to the places at the beginning and end of the epistle. Again, John could have chosen to call the Father “eternal life,” but in fact he did not.
The evidence we have surveyed here shows rather strongly that 1 John 5:20 does call Jesus “God.” For some exegetes, even orthodox ones like Harris, this poses a difficulty, since here John says that Christ “is the true God,” using the article (ho). According to Harris, Christ could be called “God” without the article to express his divine nature but could not be called “God” with the article because to do so would be to identify him as the person commonly called God, that is, the Father.33 This principle, however, should not govern our exegesis of texts that seem otherwise to call Jesus God.
It is true that John 1:1c omits the article (“the Word was God”) because the Word is not being identified there as the person called God (ton theon) in the preceding clause. It does not follow, though, that New Testament writers could not use the article with theos in references to Jesus in other contexts where such a direct contradiction would not arise. Harris acknowledges that Christ is called theos with the article in John 20:28 (“my God”), pointing out that the article was grammatically required there.34 As we will see in the next chapter, three of the other four New Testament references to Jesus as God use the article with theos (Titus 2:13; Heb. 1:8; 2 Peter 1:1; the one exception is Rom. 9:5). There are reasons for its use in each instance, but the point is that the article can be used in references to Jesus as God where the author deems it appropriate.
In 1 John 5:20, we would suggest that John uses the article because he is making a complex statement about Jesus. John does not write simply, “He is God,” but rather, “He is the true God and eternal life.” John uses the article here to make explicit that the two descriptive elements, “true God” and “eternal life,” are both to be understood as applied to the same person (Jesus Christ).
On a simpler level, in popular polemics against the traditional interpretation, Unitarians and Jehovah’s Witnesses (among others) commonly point out that the Father is called “the only true God” in John 17:3. If John says that the Father is “the only true God,” how could he elsewhere say that the Son is “the true God”?35 This objection assumes what these critics need to show, which is that John could not have thought of both the Father and the Son as “the (only) true God.” We have already seen that John calls Christ theos (“God”) positively in affirmative and confessional statements in the same Gospel where John 17:3 occurs (John 1:1, 18; 20:28). Furthermore, as we explained in chapter 21, the New Testament gives no room for the notion that any mere creature might be affirmatively described or confessed as theos. In short, if Jesus is truly theos, he is the true theos. The very title “the true God” contrasts this God with false gods epitomized by idols, a contrast made explicit in this context by John’s next, parting words: “Little children, keep yourselves from idols” (1 John 5:21). Thus, the only way to use John 17:3 to deny that Christ is called God in 1 John 5:20 is to try to show that Christ is not called God in any of the three references we examined in the Gospel. We have already presented the exegetical evidence supporting those references.
One final point: Given the conclusion that 1 John 5:20 refers to Jesus as God, this conclusion correlates in a compelling fashion with John 20:28–31. There Jesus is called both “God” and “the Son of God” and is presented as the source of eternal life in the climactic passage of the Gospel. In 1 John 5:20 Jesus likewise is called both “the Son of God” and “God” and is confessed as the source of “eternal life” at the very end of the epistle. What this literary parallel shows is that we are not arbitrarily misreading random statements in John’s writings in the interests of imposing a divine Christology on the text. Rather, in both John 20:28–31 and 1 John 5:20, we find the author reserving his most exalted descriptions of Jesus for the climactic passages of each book.
25. E.g., Georg Strecker, The Johannine Letters: A Commentary on 1, 2, and 3 John, trans. Linda M. Maloney, ed. Harold Attridge, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996), 210–12; Daniel L. Akin, 1, 2, 3 John, NAC 38 (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2001), 214–15; Gary W. Derickson, First, Second, and Third John, EEC (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2012), 557–58.
26. Harris, Jesus as God, 240–53; more recently, Judith M. Lieu, I, II & III John: A Commentary, NTL (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2012), 232–34.
27. Harris, Jesus as God, 242–46; see also Daniel B. Wallace, Granville Sharp’s Canon and Its Kin: Semantics and Significance, Studies in Biblical Greek 14 (New York: Peter Lang, 2009), 273–77. Cf. Stafford, Jehovah’s Witnesses Defended, 2nd ed., 405–8, who argues implausibly that “the true God” is the Father and “eternal life” is the Son.
28. Harris, Jesus as God, 247.
29. Harris, Jesus as God, 247.
30. As pointed out in Wallace, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics, 327.
31. The “impersonal” pronouns commonly used in English versions of 1 John 1:2 simply reflect the fact that John is referring to Christ using the abstract (and grammatically feminine) noun zoē, “life.” That John is referring to Christ is clear from the parallels with John 1:1–5.
32. As in Harris, Jesus as God, 248.
33. Harris, Jesus as God, 250.
34. Harris, Jesus as God, 250.
35. E.g., Zarley, Restitution of Jesus Christ, 405; Stafford, Jehovah’s Witnesses Defended, 2nd ed., 407–408.
Further Reading
William Craig & the Deity of Christ
REVISITED: JESUS THE TRUE GOD AND ETERNAL LIFE
JESUS CHRIST: TRUE GOD FROM TRUE GOD
JOHN 17:3 AND THE ONLY TRUE GOD
CHRIST: THE FATHER’S CO-CREATOR
The Bible on the Only True God Pt. 1
Pingbacks
Answering Islam – Sam Shamoun Theology Newsletter
Join the newsletter to receive the latest updates in your inbox.