The most familiar and beloved verse in all the Holy Bible is the sixteenth verse of the third chapter of the Gospel according to St. John. It has been called “the Gospel in a nutshell” and “the Bible in miniature”. Here it is in the English rendition of the Authorized Bible:
For God so loved the
world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him
should not perish, but have everlasting life.
One would think that if there was any verse in Scripture
that all Christian believers would agree should be beyond acrimonious disputes
about interpretation it would be this one.
That is not however the case.
There have been several such disputes about this verse. We shall examine three of those here, each
having to do with a different word in the Greek text. Here is that Greek text:
Οὕτω γὰρ ἠγάπησεν ὁ θεὸς τὸν κόσμον, ὥστε τὸν υἱὸν
αὐτοῦ τὸν μονογενῆ ἔδωκεν,
ἵνα πᾶς ὁ πιστεύων εἰς αὐτὸν μὴ ἀπόληται ἀλλ' ἔχῃ ζωὴν αἰώνιον.
The above is the text as it appears in the Textus Receptus,
the text underlying the Authorized Bible.
The Nestle-Aland and UBS critical editions have Οὕτως instead of Οὕτω as
the first word and leave out the αὐτοῦ.
Neither of these differences affects the meaning of the text. Οὕτως and Οὕτω are two different ways of
spelling the same word. Most often the
former is used before words beginning with vowels and the latter before words
beginning with consonants but it is not a hard rule. αὐτοῦ is the word that means “his” in “his
only begotten son” (1) but this meaning is
implicit in the text even without it.
The easiest of the disputes to dispense with is the one
pertaining to the seventh word in the verse, κόσμον. This is the word for “world” and in the
first clause of the verse it stands as the direct object of the verb ἠγάπησεν
(“he loved”), with ὁ θεὸς (God) as the subject. A certain type of Calvinist objects to this
word being taken in its ordinary sense in this context but it conflicts with
his idea that God only loves a tiny portion of the people of the world, His
elect, and hates all the rest, having unalterably determined their eternal
damnation from before the beginning of time.
This kind of Calvinist argues that κόσμος does not always mean the world
in its entirety but can be used in a more limited sense. This is true, but it by no means follows
from this that the term can be used in the specific limited sense that the
Calvinists imply, i.e., as referring to God’s elect. Technically, the basic meaning of the word
is “order”. It can have the subordinate
meanings of “good behaviour” and “government” and can even mean such things as “ornament”
and “ruler”. From the basic meaning of “order”,
however, it developed the sense in which it was used in serious abstract
thought, i.e., the world or universe, considered in regards to its structure
and order. It is in this sense and its
subordinate meanings such as “the present world” (as opposed to that of a
future age) “mankind in general” (as opposed to a specific people) and the like
that we find it in the New Testament. “Mankind
in general” is the sense in which most people would understand this word in John
3:16 and it is itself a subordinate sense to “universe”. If the common understanding is erroneous, a
strong case could be made based on passages like the eight chapter of Romans
that the error is in understanding κόσμος in only this limited sense rather
than as meaning all of Creation which clearly is part of God’s redemptive
plan. Another limited sense of the word
that is prominently used elsewhere in the New Testament is as the designation
of the spiritual forces arrayed against God’s kingdom operating in and through
human society. This could hardly be the
sense in which the word is used in John 3:16.
What both of these limited senses of the word have in common is that
they both refer to something that is so large in scale that calling it by the
name of the whole created order does not seem ludicrous or inappropriate. This could hardly be said of the
hyper-Calvinist interpretation of the word in John 3:16. Yes, hyper-Calvinist is the appropriate term
for the interpretation that “world” in John 3:16 does not mean the whole of
mankind but only a select number chosen from out of the whole. “Hyper-Calvinist” suggests taking the ideas
of John Calvin and taking them to an extreme beyond what he himself
taught. Here is what Calvin himself had
to say about this in his Commentary
as translated by the Rev. William Pringle:
That whosoever believeth on him may not
perish. It
is a remarkable commendation of faith, that it frees us from everlasting
destruction. For he intended expressly to state that, though we appear to have
been born to death, undoubted deliverance is offered to us by the faith of
Christ; and, therefore, that we ought not to fear death, which otherwise hangs
over us. And he has employed the universal term whosoever, both to invite all
indiscriminately to partake of life, and to cut off every excuse from
unbelievers. Such is also the import of the term World, which he
formerly used; for though nothing will be found in the world that
is worthy of the favor of God, yet he shows himself to be reconciled to the
whole world, when he invites all men without exception to the faith of Christ,
which is nothing else than an entrance into life.
(bold indicates italics in the original, underlining indicates what I
wish to emphasize).
Calvin went on to mention election in the sentence that
immediately follows this quotation, but unlike many of his followers he had the
good sense not to force its intrusion into the meaning of the universal terms
within the verse.
The next controversy that we shall look at pertains to the
word μονογενῆ. It is the singular masculine
accusative form of μονογενής, a third declension adjective belonging to a class
of adjectives that are highly irregular even for the third declension. This is the word translated “only-begotten” in
the Authorized Bible. A great many
today insist that this is a mistranslation and modern versions tend to use
“only”, “one of a kind” or “unique” in place of “only-begotten”. I have addressed this in the past in the
context of discussing the closely related contemporary theological problem in
which many recent prominent evangelical leaders have denied the doctrines of
the Eternal Generation and Eternal Sonship of Jesus Christ and taught instead
Incarnational Sonship while claiming to be sound Trinitarians, a problem
compounded by the fact that an even larger number of evangelical leaders who do
not reject Eternal Generation and Sonship have nevertheless accepted the claims
of the Incarnational Sonship teachers to be orthodox Trinitarians. The Eternal Sonship of Jesus Christ is part
of the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity, of course. The doctrine of the Holy Trinity is not
merely that the three co-equal, co-eternal, Persons of Father, Son and Holy
Spirit are One in Being, but Three in Person, so that as Persons they are
distinct from each other, but each is fully God, and the same One God as the
other two. It is also that the three
have distinct relations to each other.
None of the three are created, all have no chronological beginning but
are co-eternal, however, the Father is neither begotten nor does He proceed
from another Person, whereas the Son is begotten of the Father (eternally, not
in a moment of time to which there was a before), and the Holy Ghost proceeds
in a manner distinct from what the Son’s being begotten denotes from the Father
(the entire Church affirms this, the Western Church adds “and the Son” which
the Eastern Church considers to be heresy).
If you fail to see the importance of this, note that Incarnational
Sonship, taught by the late Walter Martin, and John F. MacArthur Jr. before he
recanted, confuses the Persons of the Trinity.
The Agent in the Incarnation is identified in the Gospels of SS Matthew
and Luke as the Holy Ghost, and if Jesus’ being the Son is due to the
Incarnation and not to His eternal pre-Incarnation relationship with the
Father, that makes the Holy Ghost the Father.
With regards to the word μονογενής the claim is made
that while this was previously thought to have been formed by adding μό̂νον (only)
to γεννάω (beget) it was actually the noun γένος rather than the verb γεννάω
that went into the compound adjective’s formation and since γένος means “kind”
the adjective means “one of a kind” or “unique” rather than “only-begotten”. This first thing to observe about this
argument is that even if it is correct to say that μονογενής is formed from γένος
rather than γεννάω, the conclusion by no means necessarily follows. While γένος can be translated “kind” this is
somewhat misleading. The first meaning
that Liddell and Scott give to this word is “race, stock, kin”, and the other
meanings given are arranged in such a way as to indicate that they are all
derivatives of this primary meaning. A
clarifying subhead to the first meaning emphasizes that it refers to “direct
descent” as opposed to “collateral relationship”. The second meaning given is “offspring, even
of a single descendent”, which the subhead “collectively, offspring,
posterity”, and the third meaning is “generally, race, of beings”. The
meaning “class, sort, kind” is the fifth in the list, and the subentries to it
demonstrate that even here it is classes, sorts, and kinds of things that are
biologically related that is primarily intended. The significance of all this is that γένος
is a noun that incorporates the verbal idea of γεννάω in itself. This should surprise nobody as the two words
are closely etymologically related. It
is not that γένος first means “kind” or “sort” in a general sense and “race” or
“kin” is derived from the general meaning through specific application. It is the other way around. The word γένος first denotes groups that
share a common biological descent and it is by metaphorical extension that the
more general sense is arrived at. In
other words the meaning of γεννάω cannot be eliminated from μονογενής simply
by tracing the second part of the compound to γένος rather than to γεννάω.
A look at how μονογενής was used both in the New Testament
and in ancient Greek literature as a whole shows that those who object to
rendering this word “only begotten” have no sound scholarly reason to do so. The adjective appears nine times in total in
the New Testament. Five of these,
including the one we have been discussing, refer to Jesus Christ as the μονογενής
Son of God. One is a reference in the
book of Hebrews to Abraham’s offering of Isaac. The other three, all in the Gospel according
to St. Luke, are references to children – the son of the widow of Nain, Jairus’
daughter, and the possessed son of the father whom Jesus encountered upon
coming down from the Mount of Transfiguration – and in each case μονογενής was
used to indicate that the child was the only child of his or her parent. This same pattern occurs throughout Greek
literature as a whole. The adjective μονογενής
is almost as tied to nouns like παῖς, τέκνον, υἱός and θυγάτηρ (child,
child, son, daughter) as Homer’s πολύφλοισβος (much roaring) was to θάλασσα
(the sea). This is a strong indicator
that the primary meaning of the adjective pertains specifically to children and
that when it is used in a more general sense this is the secondary meaning
derived from the primary.
It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that this insistence
that μονογενής means “one of a kind” rather than “only begotten” has less to do
with Greek scholarship than with hyper-Protestantism. Orthodox Protestantism rejects the errors
that are distinctive to Rome, especially the Rome of the late Medieval Period,
but accepts what is genuinely Catholic, that is to say, the doctrines,
practices, etc. that belong to the whole Church going back to the earliest
centuries before the major schisms.
Hyper-Protestantism goes beyond this and opposes much that is Catholic
as well as that which is distinctively Roman.
Orthodox Protestants confess the
Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed.
Hyper-Protestants do not all reject the Nicene Creed per se, but their
thinking is filled with all sorts of wrong ideas that generate suspicion of the
Creed as being too “Catholic”. It is
from this sort of thinking the idea has gained traction in certain evangelical
circles that one can have orthodox Trinitarianism without the doctrine of Eternal
Generation. The Fathers of the Nicene and
Constantinopolitan Councils of the fourth century had it right, however. It is because we confess about Jesus that:
τὸν ἐκ τοῦ Πατρὸς γεννηθέντα πρὸ πάντων
τῶν αἰώνων
(He was begotten of the Father
before all worlds),
and that He is:
γεννηθέντα οὐ ποιηθέντα
(begotten, not made),
that we can confess that He is:
ὁμοούσιον τῷ Πατρί
(of one substance with the
Father).
The final dispute that we shall look at concerns the first
word in the Greek text, οὕτω. Again, it
makes no difference to the meaning of this word whether it is spelled with the
final sigma or not. This is the word
rendered “so” in the Authorized Bible.
It precedes the word for “for” in the Greek, γὰρ, because γὰρ cannot
stand in the first position in a Greek clause, although “for” has to stand in
the first position in English to convey the same meaning as γὰρ in Greek. It is frequently maintained that the
Authorized Bible misrepresents the meaning of this word in its rendition of the
first clause of the verse “For God so loved the world”. Worded this way, “so” is an expression of
extent or degree. “For God so loved the
world” means the same thing as “For God loved the world so much”. οὕτω, however, means “so” in the sense of
“thus” or “in this manner” and so, we have often been told, the Authorized
rendition is inaccurate.
That οὕτως does indeed mean “thus”, “in this way” or “in
this manner” is not in dispute, nor even that this is the primary meaning of
the word. The problem with those who
insist that it must have this meaning in this verse is that they maintain that
it cannot have the meaning “so much”.
This is demonstrably false, and furthermore, this verse employs the very
construction in which οὕτως is most likely to have the meaning of “so much”.
The word οὕτως is the adverbial form of οὕτος. οὕτος is a demonstrative, or if you prefer
the term with Greek rather than Latin roots, a deictic. Usually classified as pronouns,
demonstratives or deictics are words that serve as both pronouns and
adjectives. Unlike most adjectives,
however, which ascribe qualities such as “hot”, “red”, “wet”, etc. to nouns,
demonstratives point to nouns. We have
two of them in English, each with a singular and plural form – this/these and that/those. This/these points to something near or
pertaining to the speaker and so could be said to be first person. That/those points to something remote from
the speaker and could be said to be third person. When we need a demonstrative that is second
person, that is to say, pointing to something near or pertaining in some way to
the person addressed we can use either this or that for this purpose. In Greek there are three distinct
demonstratives, one for each person. οὕτος
is the second person deictic, the one that point to something near or
pertaining to the person addressed. It
is also the one that is generally used when you want to point back to something
that has just been said, as opposed to pointing forward to what is about to
said. For the latter, the first person
personal pronoun which is the definite article compounded with the suffix – δέ
is normally used. Adverbs ordinarily differ
from their corresponding adjectives in application rather than meaning. Think of “quick” and “quickly”. We use the word “quick” in sentences like “Bob
is a quick runner” which ascribe the quality of quickness to persons or
things. We use the word “quickly” in
sentences like “Bob ran quickly” which ascribe the same quality to the verb
rather than the noun. Adverbs can also
modify adjectives, other adverbs, or even entire sentences such as “Quickly,
Bob ran to the bank and took out $100 dollars then went to the store and bought
himself an apple” (Bob clearly lived in a time of Trudeau-era inflation). Just as adding “ly” turns any adjective in
English into an adverb, lengthening the final omicron in an adjective into an
omega turns it into an adverb in Greek.
This is what we see with οὕτος and οὕτως. οὕτως, therefore, in its most basic sense,
is an adverb that points to verbs, adjectives, clauses, sentences, etc. in the
same way that οὕτος points to nouns. It
is to οὕτος, what “thus” is to “this”.
While it might seem like that clinches the argument for
those who claim that that the οὕτω in John 3:16 means “in this manner” rather
than “so much”, note that even in English “thus” is not limited to this
meaning. It is frequently used with the
meaning of “therefore” and with reference to extent rather than manner. “Bob
ran thus far” would be an example of thus used with reference to extent. A familiar example is the saying frequently
used in “line-in-the-sand” moments, “thus far, no further”, which is actually a
paraphrase of Job 38:11. Similarly,
while the οὕτως was primarily used with reference to manner, this was by no
means its only use. Its second meaning,
like that of its English counterpart, was “therefore”, and its third meaning,
as given by Liddell and Scott, was “to such an extent, so, so much, so very, so
excessively”. The first example the
lexicographers give of this meaning is from the third book of Homer’s Iliad.
This is where Priam, king of Troy, has summoned Helen to the walls and
asked her to identify for him a particular warrior among the Achaeans who has
caught Priam’s eye. It turns out that
Agamemnon, son of Atreus and commander of the Greek army is the one
indicated. The relevant verse is verse
169 where Priam spells out why the king of Mycenae has so caught his eye:
καλὸν δ᾽ οὕτω ἐγὼν οὔ πω ἴδον ὀφθαλμοῖσιν,
which means “but so handsome [a man], I have not yet seen
with my own eyes”.
Although οὕτω here is modifying an adjective, καλὸν, rather
than a verb as in John 3:16, it has precisely the meaning that some have
foolishly claimed it cannot have in the Scriptural text.
That οὕτω had not lost this meaning by the time the New
Testament was written can be seen in the third verse in the third chapter of
St. Paul’s epistle to the Galatians.
This verse begins with the question:
οὕτως ἀνόητοί ἐστε;
which means “are you so foolish?” I have never heard anybody try to argue that
οὕτως means “in this manner” here.
With the exceptions of one or two which paraphrase the question so that it
is impossible to tell what meaning they ascribe to οὕτως, (2) the English
translations all treat it as an expression of degree or intensity here. See also Revelation 16:18 which ends with
the words: σεισμὸς, οὕτω μέγας – “so great an earthquake”. Here the οὕτω modifying the adjective μέγας
(great) cannot be anything but the intensifier “so” as in “so much”. Other New Testament examples that I will not
go into at length are Galatians 1:6, 1 Thessalonians 2:8, and Hebrews 12:21.
Now, showing that οὕτω can mean “so” in the sense of “so
much” is not the same thing as showing that this is what it means in John
3:16. We have seen that its primary
meaning is “in this way” or “in this manner” and, although that meaning would
clearly be absurd in Iliad 3.169 this
is not the case in the Gospel verse. Is
there any reason for thinking that the meaning of “so much” rather than “in
this manner” is what is intended in John 3:16?
The answer is a clear yes.
In Greek, as in Latin and English, there is a category of subordinate
clauses that we call result clauses.
These can indicate such things as what would naturally be expected to
follow from the action of the main verb, whether or not it actually did, and what
the actual result of the action was.
There are words that appear in the main clause of sentences that contain
result clauses that indicate that a result clause is coming. οὕτω/ οὕτως is one such word, Then there are the words which begin the
result clauses themselves. The main one
of these is ὥστε which means “so that”.
ὥστε is a compound of ὡς (as, so, that) which can also be used for this
purpose. There is also a kind of clause
called a final clause, not because it occurs last in the sentence which may or
may not be the case but because it expresses the end in the sense of purpose of
the action of the main verb, or, in other words the result that the doer of the
action of the main verb intended. There
are a number of words that can begin this kind of clause, the main one being ἵνα
which means “in order that”. If you
look above to the Greek text of John 3:16 you will notice that it contains both
a result clause and a final clause. ὥστε τὸν υἱὸν
αὐτοῦ τὸν μονογενῆ ἔδωκεν is the result clause. The final clause is ἵνα πᾶς ὁ πιστεύων εἰς αὐτὸν μὴ ἀπόληται ἀλλ' ἔχῃ ζωὴν αἰώνιον.
If the final clause were the only subordinate clause in the
verse then those who maintain that οὕτω means “in this manner” here would
have a much stronger case. However,
between the final clause and the main clause, falls the result clause beginning
with ὥστε. It is when it is used in
conjunction with ὥστε like this that οὕτω most often means “so much” rather
than “in this manner”. The two words
work together to create the sense of “so much X that Y”.
One example of this from ancient Greek literature is found
in the first book of Herodotus’ Histories. In his account of the life of Croesus, king
of Lydia, Herodotus relates a lengthy exchange between the king and Solon, the
Athenian reformer and lawmaker. Croesus
asked Solon whom he judged to be the happiest man he had ever encountered. Solon, not unaware that Croesus expected to
be named himself, nevertheless answered Tellus the Athenian, and gave his
reasons. To the follow-up question
about who the second happiest was, Solon answered that it was Cloebis and Biton,
and explained why. This irritated
Croesus who then asked “ὦ ξεῖνε Ἀθηναῖε, ἡ δ᾽ ἡμετέρη εὐδαιμονίη οὕτω τοι ἀπέρριπται ἐς τὸ μηδὲν ὥστε οὐδὲ ἰδιωτέων ἀνδρῶν ἀξίους ἡμέας ἐποίησας;”
which means “O Athenian stranger-friend, is this our happiness so cast away into nothingness to you that you made us less worthy than
ordinary men?”
Countless other such examples could be given. This is a very common construction in ancient
Greek literature. Note that in the
above example the verb in the result clause, ἐποίησας, is in the indicative
mood, which is the basic mood of the verb, the one used when making ordinary statements
about things as they are, as opposed to things which might be, which one wishes
would be, etc. In result clauses a natural
but not necessarily actual result is placed in the infinitive, an actual result
in the indicative. When the “οὕτω … ὥστε….”
construction employs the indicative in the result clause this raises the
likelihood of it being used in the “so much…that” sense to near certainty and
this is what we see in John 3:16 where the verb in the result clause is ἔδωκεν,
an indicative aorist meaning “he gave”.
I am not going to belabour the point much further. Unlike the first two interpretive problems,
this third one does not have much theological significance. Saying that God gave us His Son as our
Saviour because He loved us so much does not exclude saying that the manner in
which He loved us was that He gave us His Son or vice versa. Indeed, since expressions with double
meanings are fairly common in St. John’s Gospel – a much discussed example is ἄνωθεν
with the double meaning of “again” and “from above” which is a key element in
the same discussion in which John 3:16 occurs – not a few have suggested that
both senses of οὕτω are being simultaneously intended in this verse. The reason that I thought this worthy of as
lengthy a treatment as I have given it is the frequency with which I have
encountered the idea that in John 3:16 οὕτω means “in this manner” rather than “so
much” asserted with a dogmatic authority that the facts simply do not bear
out. It seems evident to me that this
dogmatism comes from either a) the plethora of Bible-study tools currently
available that allow people to pontificate about what “the Greek” means without
actually studying it, b) the curious and utterly wrongheaded contemporary
notion that the Greek of the New Testament is best studied by itself without
reference to any other ancient Greek literature, or c) the combination of the
two. Somebody who studies New Testament
Greek and only New Testament Greek might very well be unfamiliar with the “οὕτω
… ὥστε….” construction. John 3:16
happens to be the only verse in the entire Johannine corpus where ὥστε
appears. Needless to say, this very
common ancient Greek construction is rare in the New Testament. This, however, makes it that much more
important that we pay attention to how it was used in other ancient Greek
literature because when an author uses it rarely, or, as in the case of St. John
here, only once, this is a good indication that it was chosen specifically because
the established meaning is one that the author wished to particularly
emphasize.
(2) The Orthodox Jewish Bible, for example, rephrases it from a question into a statement “you lack seichel”. The adverb in the question disappears completely when this is done. Seichel, if it is not already obvious, is the opposite of foolishness.
Merry Christmas Gerry. Blessings to you and your family throughout this holy season. All the best for 2023!
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