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Wallace, Jesus & the True God

The excerpt cited here is taken from Dr. Daniel B. Wallace’s Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament, published by Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI 1996], pp. 326-327. All emphasis will be mine.

 

1 John 5:20 houtos estin ho alethinos theos kai zoe aionios

 

this is the true God and eternal life

 

This text is exegetically problematic for a variety of reasons. What concerns us here is what the antecedent is. Many scholars see ho theos rather than Christos as the antecedent, even though Christos is closer. Winer argues, for example, that “in the first place, alethinos theos is a constant and exclusive epithet of the Father; and, secondly, there follows a warning against idolatry, and alethinos theos is always contrasted with eidola.”29

 

On behalf of seeing Christos as the antecedent are the following arguments: (1) Although it is true that alethinos theos is not elsewhere referred to Christ, aletheia is, and is so in Johannine literature (John 14:6). Further, alethinos theos is not a “constant .. epithet” as Winer supposes, being found only in John 17:3 and 1 John 5:20! (2) Christ is also said to be zoe in John’s writings (John 11:25; 14:6; 1 John 1:1-2), an epithet nowhere else used of the Father. (3) The demonstrative pronoun, houtos, in the Gospel and Epistles of John seems to be used in a theologically rich manner.30 Specifically, of the approximately seventy instances in which houtos has a personal referent, as many as forty-four of them (almost two-thirds of the instances) refer to the Son. Of the remainder, most imply some sort of positive connection with the Son.31 What is most significant is that never is the Father the referent. For what it is worth, this datum increases the probability that Iesou Christo is the antecedent in 1 John 5:20.32

 

The issue cannot be decided on grammar alone. But suffice it to say here that there are no grammatical reasons for denying that alethinos theos is descriptive of Jesus Christ.33

 

Further Reading

 

 

 
 
 

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