The opening
greeting of 2 Peter identifies its author as “Συμεὼν Πέτρος, δοῦλος καὶ ἀπόστολος Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ, τοῖς … ἐν δικαιοσύνῃ τοῦ θεοῦ ἡμῶν καὶ σωτῆρος Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ”—“Simeon Peter, a slave and apostle
of Jesus Christ, to those … in the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus
Christ.” The New World Translation, however, divides the construction and
renders: “by the righteousness of our God and the Savior Jesus Christ,” thus
avoiding the identification of Jesus as both “God” and “Savior.” The defense of
this reading rests on two claims: that the Greek permits or even favors a
two-person interpretation, and that contextual or theological factors in 2
Peter require it. A careful examination of the language, the syntax known as
the Granville Sharp rule, and the immediate literary setting shows that both
claims fail.
1. The
form of the construction
The
relevant words form an article–noun–καί–noun (TSKS) sequence: τοῦ θεοῦ ἡμῶν καὶ σωτῆρος Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ. Granville Sharp demonstrated that
when (i) two singular, personal, non-proper substantives share one article and
(ii) no contextual disqualifier is present, both substantives invariably have
the same referent. Sharp excluded plurals and proper names, and those
exclusions have been confirmed in subsequent quantitative surveys of
Hellenistic and patristic corpora. Daniel Wallace’s computer-assisted collation
of every NT instance shows eighty-plus examples that meet Sharp’s criteria and
not one clear counter-instance; where the construction occurs with proper names
or other disqualifying features the rule is not expected to apply.
In 2 Pet
1:1 both nouns (θεός, σωτήρ) are singular, personal, and common,
and the second is immediately followed by the proper name Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ in apposition. Nothing in the
syntax overrides their natural co-reference. Indeed, the three other
occurrences of the very pair κύριος καὶ σωτήρ inside the letter (1:11; 2:20; 3:18) all apply
both titles unambiguously to the one person Jesus Christ. That internal usage
weighs heavily against breaking the cohesion of 1:1 only eleven words into the
epistle.
2. “God”
as a supposed proper name
Because
Sharp’s rule applies only when neither substantive is a proper name, NWT
apologists argue that θεός functions as a proper name for the Father and
therefore creates an exception. The fallacy is two-fold. First, θεός in
the NT is not treated as a rigid designator but as a titular noun that can take
modifiers (“the living God,” “the God of Abraham,” “our God and Father”) and
can even be applied to others metaphorically (2 Cor 4:4). As Wallace observes,
a word that admits such qualifiers cannot be semantically equivalent to a
personal name. Second, when θεός is used as a putative name in the NT it
is characteristically anarthrous (John 1:1c; Heb 1:8); here, by contrast, it
bears the article shared with σωτήρ, signaling a descriptive rather than
a naming function.
3. The
objection from “paired” nouns
NWT defenders propose that θεός and σωτήρ constitute a semantically
“paired” set (like “king and queen”), so that the single article does not
require identity of referent. Yet the evidence of Hellenistic and LXX Greek
contradicts this. The combination rarely occurs; where it does, it either employs
two articles when two persons are in view (e.g., 2 Macc 1:24) or one article
when one person is intended (Wis 16:7; 3 Macc 6:32). Context, not some putative
collocational rule, governs the usage. Ezra Abbot’s nineteenth-century appeal
to Prov 24:21 LXX fails because βασιλεύς is plural in sense (the human
monarchy) and θεός there substitutes for the tetragrammaton, functioning
as a proper name; thus the text is outside Sharp’s parameters.
4.
Literary cohesion in 2 Peter
Verse 2
immediately follows with the prayer, “May grace and peace be multiplied to you
in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.” NWT defenders treat this as
proof that Peter “consistently” distinguishes θεός from Jesus. The shift,
however, is stylistically expected: v.1 contains the weighty titular formula of
salutation, whereas v.2 resumes the traditional epistolary wish found in 1 Pet
1:2 and in Paul. Crucially, 2 Peter never uses the simplex expression “our God”
of the Father alone; when “our God” reappears at 3:12 it is embedded in the
eschatological hope centred on τοῦ θεοῦ ἡμῶν, a hope fulfilled at “the appearing of τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν καὶ σωτῆρος Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ” (1:11). The narrative arc thus
converges on a single figure whose identity seamlessly unites the titles
“Lord,” “Savior,” and here “God.”
5.
Patristic reception
Although
modern Watch Tower literature claims that no early writer understood 2 Pet 1:1
as calling Christ “God,” patristic citations tell a different story. Athanasius
(c. 296–373) repeatedly quotes the verse in that sense (e.g., Oratio Contra
Arianos 1.3), and the reading underlies the Nicene Creed’s application of θεός
ἀληθινός to
the Son. The fact that all extant Greek manuscripts unite on the text of 1:1
further vitiates the conjecture, advanced in some older critical notes, that θεός
is a scribal alteration of an original κύριος.
6.
Translational consequences
The NWT’s
“our God and the Savior Jesus Christ” inserts a second article without Greek
warrant, thereby producing a construction that does not exist in the source
text. Every major critical edition, from Westcott-Hort through NA28, prints the
single article, and mainstream versions (e.g., NRSV, ESV, NASB, NIV) reflect
it. By mechanically repeating the English article the NWT forecloses the Greek
author’s intended identification and imposes a theological distinction alien to
the syntax.
Conclusion
Grammatical
analysis rooted in the Granville Sharp principle, corroborated by usage within
2 Peter and by the earliest reception history, shows that the epistle’s very
first sentence acclaims Jesus as “our God and Savior.” The New World
Translation’s evasion of that claim hangs on ad hoc exceptions to a rule that
otherwise enjoys unbroken attestation and fails to respect the letter’s own
patterns of titulary usage. Far from being ambiguous, 2 Peter 1:1 furnishes one
of the clearest New Testament affirmations of the full deity of Christ, a
confession that stands at the heart of Petrine—and apostolic—Christology.
