I've been corresponding with a nice fellow on another forum who offered P.B. Harner's argumentation to support taking QEOS at John 1:1c "qualitatively". Since I still haven't managed to find the time (or to take the time) to address Harner's thesis in this series, I thought it might be useful to post my most recent response to my fellow interlocutor, as I do provide a bullet list of what I consider the most serious problems with the 'Q Hypothesis', including some of Harner's contentions. I've omitted my interlocutor's name and his side of the dialogue because I did not get his permission to quote him here. You can read the dialogue for yourself, at the link following link if you wish:
http://trinities.org/blog/podcast-124-a-challenge-to-jesus-is-god-apologists/#comment-2676499208
Hi...,
[Snip comment]
I appreciate the fact
that you took the time to consider my perspective. I actually have a
number of issues with what I call the ‘Q hypothesis’ as it was
formulated by Harner and later “refined” by Dixon, and I hope to
elaborate more when I finally post on Harner on my blog (I’m a bit shy
about posting an encyclopedic argument here!). First of all, though, I
would say that neither of them “arrive[d] at their conclusion that the
noun QEOS is ‘qualitative’” via any sort of sound exegesis or
demonstrably valid grammatical analysis. Rather, I think that they both
came to realize that Colwell’s Rule had been misapplied, and they came
to feel that a definite QEOS equated the LOGOS with God in a way that
was perceived to be unacceptable, which left them with a problem to
solve. As they pondered a potential solution, they came to sincerely
believe that a ‘qualitative’ QEOS was the only QEOS that could sit
comfortably within their Christological worldview, and so they assumed
it to be so before ever picking up pen and paper. At that time there
was probably a growing uneasiness among informed people about the once
popular Calwell-ian understanding, and so when someone came along and
offered an alternative, they embraced it with great alacrity and
accepted it with childlike eagerness long before it was properly vetted or demonstrated to be a valid linguistic phenomenon.
From my
perspective, what Ken Ham does vis a vis modern science is what Harner
and Dixon did vis a vis Greek. Don’t get me wrong, I like Ken Ham, but
because he reads the creation accounts as speaking of a literal six day
creation, he has to chuck a pretty large part of modern science,
including Big Bang Theory (one of the most well established thoeries of
our time), and come up with novel counter arguments to make YEC seem
plausible. Most of us aren’t about to chuck Big Bang Theory, however,
because of the YEC notion that unexpectedly low levels of moon dust
tells us that the universe is young (as just one example of the sort of
'novel' counterargument that YEC’s have offered).
Harner was
probably motivated by apologetic concerns, and Dixon certainly was, as
one can infer when reading the introduction to his thesis. Not only did
he explicitly state that both a definite and an indefinite QEOS were
unacceptable (i.e. the two valid options, IMO), but he also presented
his case as evidence specifically against the ‘a god’ rendering found in
the Watchtower Society’s New World Translation. The folks at DTS,
which is the Seminary Dixon attended when he wrote his thesis, have
historically been a bit obsessed with the NWT. When I see the odd
contortions that those folks have gone through to try and disqualify one
of the two patently valid renderings, I find myself echoing Queen
Gertrude by observing that “The lady doth protest too much”;-)
The
Q hypotheses appears to be founded on assumptions about how language
works that are confused, unsubstantiated, and rather easy to disconfirm
if you're willing to look at the data dispassionately. The following
are what I consider the most conspicuous, critical problems:
a.
The notion that if a noun is used in a context where nature is
inferred, then it may be “technically” indefinite, but in some
self-serving way that somehow renders use of the indefinite article in
translation as inappropriate or inadequate.
b. The notion
that ‘qualitative’ is a separate distinct category of bounded noun, when
one can easily demonstrate that the very ‘qualitativeness’ they infer
-- if it's even really there in a given context -- actually depends on a
bounded noun’s definiteness or indefiniteness.
c. The
confused conflation of ‘definiteness’ and ‘indefiniteness’ with meaning
itself, when in reality these are more like syntactical tools that
contribute to meaning, but aren’t meaning in and of themselves.
To help illustrate this problem, which may be a little vague as
stated, I once saw someone on b-greek argue that QEOS at John 1:1c is
"qualitative-indefinite". One of the posters there who seemed to favor
Harner's/Dixon's approach (if memory serves) responded by saying
something like this:
"I'd like to see an example of a qualitative-indefinte noun that does not involve a double entendre."
In
making that statement, the gentleman revealed that he considers both
qualitativeness and indefiniteness to be interchangeable or synonymous
with meaning itself. So, for him, if it is qualitative then that is its
meaning, and if it is indefinite then that is its meaning. To be both
would be to have two meanings, which would be a double entendre.
I
think that this is simply an ill-conceived notion that emerges due to
imprecise thinking, and that indefinitness is more like a syntactical
feature that contributes to meaning, but it isn't necessarily meaning in
and of itself. Moreover, as I pointed out in my blog post, the very
qualitativeness that proponents of Dixon's chimera infer to be present
with various indefinite bounded nouns actually depends on the nouns'
indefinitness, just as the qualitativeness some might infer from various
definite bounded nouns actually depends on the nouns' definiteness. If
qualitativeness depends on a noun's definitness or indefinitness, then
it cannot be the noun's meaning to the exclusion of the noun's
definiteness or indefiniteness.
It seems that Dixon himself
probably intuitively realized this at some level, as he states in the
intro to his thesis that all nouns are "technically" either definite or
indefinite, and that he separated the "qualitative" nouns from the class
of indefinite nouns for the sake of "expediency". I'd say that the
folks at DTS are masters at smoke and mirrors, but they actually seem to be rather clumsy at it;-)
d.
The ridiculous notion, seemingly born ad hoc from pure
imagination out of utter desperation, that if John wanted readers to
infer an indefinite QEOS then he would have placed it after the verb
rather than before the verb. I suffered third degree burns from
spilling my coffee in my lap when I read that nonsense (humor alert), so
bemused was I to see a professed ‘authority’ utter what any first year
student of Greek can plainly see is not true. Indeed, statistically, it
is more common for pre-verbal anarthrous predicate bounded nouns to be
indefinite than anything else, and usually when they’re definite there
are contextual factors that make this probable, even unavoidable in some
cases. The reason the English translations of all those verses I
posted on my blog make such good sense in context even with the
indefinite article is because they accurately convey the sense of the
underlying Greek. It's not merely that the use of the indefinite article
conforms to English syntax, but that said English syntax actually captures the
sense of the Greek.
e. In conjunction with ‘d’, the bizarre
notion, again apparently born ad hoc from pure imagination, that merely
placing a noun before a verb causes the noun to change meaning, when
everyone who’s studied Greek at all knows how flexible the language is
vis a vis word order. As far as I can tell, the most that is achieved
by fronting may be a mild though useful shift in emphasis, similar to
what occurs in English when we rearrange a sentence from the active to
the passive voice. If we rearrange a sentence from the active to the
passive voice, there is no shift in meaning at the word level; there is
merely a shift in emphasis at the sentence level. Likewise, when a noun
is placed before the verb in Greek, there is not a shift in meaning at
the word level, but there may be a subtle shift in emphasis at the
sentence level.
[Snip comment about a Jehovah's Witness he spoke with]
Well, if the JW felt that the mere
grammatical feature of an indefinite QEOS by itself meant that Jesus was
a lesser god, then I’d say that he was clearly mistaken. One could say
that "the Father is a god who is slow to anger”, or “the Father is a
god of the living, not of the dead”, or “the Father is a god who
designed us in a way that is fear-inspiring”, or "the Father truly is a
god (=a supremely powerful supernatural being)", etc., without in any
way suggesting that He is something other than the absolute Ruler of the
universe.
However, if the JW you conversed with was also
considering context, not just the indefinite QEOS by itself, then I
would have to agree with him. IMO, in the context of John 1:1, the
Bible as a whole, and the Jewish culture from which the NT emerged, the
LOGOS could only be either a subordinate ‘G-god’, or 'God/a god'
non-literally (=functionally/representationally). In arriving at this
conclusion I obviously take different things for granted than you do.
For example, I look at the Jewish worldview as expressed in pretty much
every form of writing available at the time and note that in every case,
without exception, whenever an agent of God has a divine title applied
to him, the subordination of the agent to the principal is taken for
granted (e.g. angels, Moses, Judges, Kings, Melchizedek, the Israelites
at Sinai). Most scholars today recognize how much the agency principle
sheds light on the Son’s relationship to the Father and us, and while
it’s quite striking to realize that his work as agent began with the act
of original creation itself, it was still work performed ‘as agent’.
[Snip interlocutor's concluding comments]
I agree [that understanding QEOS at John 1:1c to mean "the God" has baggage], though
I'll simply point out that QEOS wouldn’t need the article at John 1:1c
to be definite. Although Colwell’s Rule was misapplied for decades, the
part that was misapplied appears to be valid (as actually stated, not
as restated or re-conceived by some who abused it):
“Definite predicate nouns which precede the verb usually lack the article" (A Definite Rule…, p. 20)
In
other words, say we assume that QEOS is definite at John 1:1c.
Granting that assumption for the sake of argument, we can note that it’s
actually statistically more likely that it would not have the article.
That's why some have pointed out that the only meaningful application
of Colwell's Rule is for textual criticism. To exemplify how this is
so, let's say that a textual critic were to have before him or her two
manuscripts that contain the same verse, and one has a definite
pre-verbal noun with the article while the other has the same definite
pre-verbal noun but without the article. Were this to occur, the
scholar could conclude that it's statistically more likely that the
manuscript with the reading that omits the article is the one more
likely to have the correct reading.
Anyway, my pillow is calling
me, so I'll wrap this up by agreeing that I too have a horse in the
race, and theology can influence my judgement just as it can anyone
else’s. Having conceded that, however, I will say that I consider
myself to be somewhat less biased with reference to the subject text
than most people I’m familiar with who’ve used it apologetically. I
happily embrace both the traditional translation (‘the Word was God’)
and the one that sticks in the craw of the folks at DTS (‘the Word was a
god’) as legitimate possibilities, grammatically, contextually, and
theologically. Indeed, though I would probably fear for my sanity in light of my understanding of how bounded and unbounded nouns function in both English and Greek, from
a purely theological perspective I wouldn't even mind if someone could
prove that I'm mistaken about the 'Q Hypothesis', as this would merely
increase the possibilities by a third. I won't hold my breath waiting
for that to happen, though;-)
What disappoints me the most isn’t
that Trinitarians favor the traditional rendering, or even some
paraphrase that is thought to stress ‘qualitativeness’, but that it’s
virtually impossible to find a willingness on their part to honestly
present the real grammatical possibilities and express their preference
in an evenhanded way. Like the rest of us, they want confidence for
themselves and their followers that they understand the text correctly,
and this drives them, whether wittingly or unwittingly, to try and stack
the deck against alternative views. Sadly, they've gone to such absurd
lengths to secure this confidence that they've undermined their own
credibility. I'm not speaking about you, of course, but about the
professed 'authorities' who have demonstrated such a shameful
track-record when it comes to the most sacred of all theological cows:
John 1:1c.
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