Reniaa,
"It's okay to say John 1:1 is nature and qualative but it's then the assumption that God is a nature completely? so we as humans are by nature humans but then how can the bible say there can only be One true God if god is just a nature like being human? So making Jesus a god among a race of gods by nature."
No God is not a nature completely. The phrase "kai theos en ho logos" is describing what the Logos is in essence (the Logos was with (the) God and God was the Logos). In other words, what God is (in nature and essence), the Logos is (in nature and essence). If John would have put a definite article here, then the Logos may not be said to be a distinct member of God, thus you would be left with Modalism (which would be weird given what John just previously says, that "the logos was with God", thus it would say "God was with God (Himself) and would make no sense. You have to try and understand what John is saying about the logos. 1. it's eternal, 2. distinct and relational within/with God, and 3. is by nature God.
Second, Christ was not merely human. The Logos became sarx (flesh), and Phil 2 says that Jesus Christ, being in nature God... humbled Himself and became man. If God is omnipotent then He has the power to willfully limit Himself and enter into His own creation. This is in fact the idea behind the Jewish understanding of the Shekenah of God, or the part of God which comes forth and interacts with His own creation, hence the angel of the Lord in the OT and God speaking from a human perspective in the OT ("if you do this, I will do..."), etc.
"then of course you have the issue of john 1:1 also used to call Jesus the one true God by identity.
So which does John 1:1 mean.... God by nature or God by identity? one of these is saying WHAT he is the other statement is saying WHO he is. we are mixing qualitive with quantitative."
I would argue that it is mostly "what" Christ is, hence that He is the Logos (v. 14) and it is describing the nature of the Logos. This is very significant that Christ would be the Logos. The Logos was understood to be the eternal unknown source and derivative of creation, logic, rationality, moraity, and was that which held everything together, etc. The mind blowing thing about this is that John explains the already known concept of the logos to be Christ and that this logos, as Christ, became flesh and bone! This is the very foundation of God's grace to us sinners, thereby making Christ the perfect bridge builder between infinitely sinful humans and an infintely holy God!
"As witnesses accept Jesus has divine qualities by nature in fact many things from god are given divine application including man himself who is said to be 'image of God' but that still doesn't mean they are The God in the quantitative term, which the lack of definitive article on the logos means that it isn't applied to mean the logos is identified as The true God unlike the Father which in numerous places is.
17 Jesus said, "Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet returned to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, 'I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.' "
basically trinity are trying to get two meanings out of John 1:1 for the price of one by false use of capatalising God to imply identity as well as the qualitive divine, the application of 'a' in English shows it is that he is divine nature and not to be confused with identifying him as the true God who John 1:1 itself clearly states the logos is 'WITH' which itself implies the logos isn't God."
I have no problem not getting a "quantatative" affirmation of Christ being the one true God from John 1:1. This is why I am an orthodox Christian and strive to consult the entire counsel of Scripture, not have a lunch line theology where I get to discard all the other verses which show that Christ is "quantatatively" the one true God, hence the 6 places in the NT where Christ is referred to with a definite article, which I laid out already. All the more, in John 1:1 we have the Logos not having a beginning in time, hence being eternal, which completely goes against JW beleifs. We have "En arche" in John 1:1 from the outset. "En" is imperfect and without a reference to beginning, while "arche" is a beginning at some given point" such as creation. It's like saying "While already existing as the beginning of time came about", similar to Gen 1:1 "in the begining (from eternity) God created". Further, John 1:3 makes the exclusive claim that "through Him (Christ) all things were made, and without Him nothing was made that has been made", and since this statement is exclusive, it would have to include Jesus Himself. Thus Jesus was never made, but made all that ever has been made from eternity.
John 20:17 is perfectly harmoneous with Trinitarion theology. It is perfectly natural for Christ to refer to the Father as God, the Spirit as God, Himself as God, and all three as God. They all fully exhaust each other, yet in some way unknown to our finite pee brains, are distinct.
Earnest,
" I said in my original post that John makes a clear distinction between "the only true God" and Jesus Christ (at 17:3) so the presence or absence of the definite article will not change that."
I understand this. However, John also says that Isaiah saw Jesus' glory. John 12:41 says, "Isaiah said this because he saw Jesus' glory and spoke about him."
The passage just referenced is Isaiah 6 where Isaiah saw Yahweh in His temple! So who's glory does John say Isaiah saw? In verse 41 it is Jesus' glory that he saw! Even the NWT has a reference in John 12:41 to Isaiah 6, so someone might have been sleeping on the translation commity.
Further, if you study Greek 101, a definite article is pointing to a specific person, place, or thing. Only an absence of a definite article can be 1. an indefinite article, thus a catagory of a thing, i.e. "an apple", not "the apple", and 2. it can be qualitative as some have already pointed out on this thread. Christ is not only referred to with a definite article in John 20:28, but 5 other places which I pointed out at the beginning of this thread. Also, I've seen so many people to gymnastics with John 20:28 that it only leads me to believe my position even more because their arguments are so bad! Instead of humbly submitting to the Word of God, one is left to submit to an organization's interperative authority over it, even though it doesn't comport with the whole of Scripture once closely examined.
