The divinity of Christ the Son, that he was consubstantial or of the same essence as the Father, was formally acknowledged at Nicaea I in the 4th century. The decision was in great part a response to the flourishing heresy of Arianism which saw in Christ no more than a creature, a special god-like individual, subordinate to God Almighty in every way at all times. At the very core of Nicaea I was the council’s belief in the inescapable Biblical conclusion that Christ the Word was, and is, God. Church doctrine evolved from, and revolved around, this fundamental Scriptural truth. And central to this thought was John 1:1 which in part states in plain language that “The Word was God” (Green’s Literal Translation, NAB, RSV, NKJV).
The Jehovah's Witnesses and others, reflecting Arian Subordinationism, interpret John 1:1 differently. The Jehovah's Witnesses’ New World Translation Bible reads: “and the Word was a god.” A distinct minority of other translations conveying the same general idea read: “and the Word was divine” (The Bible - An American Translation, 1935), or “and godlike kind was the Logos” (Das Evangelium nach Johannes, 1978).
The Jehovah's Witnesses base their interpretation “the Word was a god” on a) rules of grammar, and b) the overall context of the Bible. Basically, they argue that even though a literal translation does not include the indefinite article “a” before God, it can and should be inserted, depending upon the context (Should You Believe, Chapter 9), even though a literal Greek rendering is “and God was the Word” or in English “and the Word was God,” (ibid., Chapter 10; Reasoning, 416, 417).
Strong and Vine’s vehemently disagrees with this grammatical assessment.
(4) Theos is used (4a) with the definite article, (4b) without (i.e., as an anarthrous noun). (4c) The English may or may not have need of the article in translation. But that point cuts no figure in the Greek idiom. Thus in Acts 27:23 (“of [the] God whose I am,”) the article points out the special God whose Paul is and is to be preserved in English. In the very next verse (ho theos) we in English do not need the article, (4c) John 1:1 As to this latter it is usual to employ the article with a proper name, when mentioned a second time. (4c) There are, of course, exceptions to this, as when the absence of the article serves to lay stress upon, or give precision to, the character or nature of what is expressed in the noun.
(4c1) A notable instance of this is in Jn 1:1, “and the Word was God”; here a double stress is on theos by the absence of the article and by the emphatic position. To translate it literally, “a god was the Word” is entirely misleading. Moreover, that “the Word” is the subject of the sentence, exemplifies the rule that the subject is to be determined by its having the article when the predicate is amorphous (without the article).
In other words, the absence of “a” in “a god” lays a double stress on and emphasizes theos so that it should read “God,” ie., “and the Word was God.”
Interestingly, in time the church fathers’ overriding struggle was with the question of the humanity of Christ, i.e., how could God the Son be truly human, not His divinity. The Jehovah's Witnesses take the opposite view, seeing Christ as only a man while assailing his divinity. Of course the real reason the Jehovah's Witnesses deny the divinity of Christ and reduce Him to “a god” is the context of the entire Bible, or more precisely, their notion of their Bible’s context (Should You Believe, Chapter 9). One hears that quite often.