A fundamental belief in many churches today is that Jehovah, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are united in a single entity known as the trinity: one god presenting himself as three different persons united as a single person. The question is, however, whether this concept is described in the Bible. The short answer is that it is not!

Generally, two verses from the Bible are used to attempt to support the concept. These are John 1:1, and John 10:30. In the King James translation John 1:1 says, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Many translations follow this rendering, however, that is by no means universal. Kneeland (1822) renders it as "the Word was a god", a rendering also used by others. Some other translators render it as "the Word was divine", Goodspeed (1935), for instance. So should it be "god", "a god" or "divine"?

This is a case where we need to examine the original Greek text to see what John actually wrote, then to use the reasoning ability that Jehovah gave us to understand what he meant. As it happens, koine Greek, the Greek of the Bible has a word for "the", but it does not have a word for "a", instead it simply uses the noun by itself, and it is up to the reader to decide whether it means a general concept, such as "a god" or "divine", or whether it simply means "god".

en archei In beginning	en was	ho logos the word	kai and	ho logos the word	en was	pros towards
ton theon the god	kai and	theos god	en was	ho logos the word

I would like to remind you that John wrote this account and he is described in the book of Acts, chapter 4:13. It says, "Now when they saw the outspokenness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated and ordinary men, they were astonished."

An uneducated man, as John was, would not compose a document that required a higher education to understand. Rather, he would write for

people like himself, ordinary men and women who would understand plain, ordinary descriptions. Academic, technical interpretations of what he wrote would only obscure the plain statements he made.

The first thing to notice is that the Greek words for "the" are used before the two words ("theon" and "logos"), but it is pointedly missing before "theos". Does this indicate that "theos" (god) is different from "ton theon" (the god)? Clearly, it does! Clearly, John was drawing a contrast between "ton theon" and "theos", using "ton theon" as a specific identifier (the god) for a specific personality (Jehovah), since he is the only true god and is consequently addressed in a way that specifically identifies him and sets him apart, whereas the specifically identified word of god ("ho logos") is said to be a "god" in a general sense rather than the specific sense used for Jehovah.

If John had included the word for "the" before "theos", it would have been obvious that they were the same, but he did not do that, he did not include it, and that was obviously done deliberately to draw a clear and distinct contrast between "ton theon" and "theos", between "the god" specifically, and "god" in general. In English, of course, we would use "the" and "a" to make this distinction, hence, "The Word was a god."

Some translators have concluded that "theos" is being used here as a description rather than an identification, and translate the word as "divine", to indicate Jesus’ godlike nature while not identifying him as the same person as Jehovah.

Also note that Jehovah and Jesus are two persons. This verse does not mention the Holy Spirit so it cannot be used to support a three person god.

If you have a question about this or any other bible subject, please ask it in an email.