The Unscholarly Scholarship of Anthony Buzzard

A Response to "John 1:1: Caveat Lector"

Robert Hommel

In his article, "John 1:1: Caveat Lector (Reader Beware)," Sir Anthony Buzzard lays out his case
for the traditional Unitarian interpretation of John 1:1-14. In doing so, he cites several scholars
and Bible translations in support of his views - many of them Trinitarian. If the Trinity is, in
fact, Christianity's "self-inflected wound" as Buzzard claims in his book with that sub-title, we
might expect to find at least some Trinitarian scholars who inadvertently undermine the Trinity
and bolster Unitarian claims. On the other hand, if we find that Buzzard has quoted selectively,
stacked the deck by not giving the entire story, thrown in a few well-placed red herrings, and
drawn ad hoc conclusions, we may well ask: "Is Anthony Buzzard the one who has wounded
himself?"
In this paper, I will review Buzzard's use of scholarly citations to see if they actually harm the
Trinity or Sir Anthony Buzzard himself.
The Word "Word"
Buzzard begins his article by questioning the validity of equating "the Word" in John 1:1 to the
pre-existent Son of God:
There is no justification in the original Greek for placing a capital W on word, and thus
inviting readers to think of a person. That is an interpretation imposed on the text, added to what
John wrote.
Buzzard argues that the most natural way to understand "the Word" is not as a person, but as the
"plan" of God, or His Wisdom personified:
It is commonly known to Bible readers that in Proverbs 8 wisdom was with [Hebrew, etzel; LXX, para]
God. That is to say, Gods wisdom is personified. It is treated as if it were a person, not that Lady
Wisdom was really a female personage alongside God. We accept this sort of language, usually without
any confusion. We do not suppose that Prudence, who is said to be dwelling with Wisdom (Prov. 8:12),
was herself literally a person. When the famous St. Louis Arch was finally completed after several years
of construction a documentary film announced that the plan had become flesh. The plan, in other
words, was now in physical form. But the arch is not one-to-one equivalent with the plans on the drawing
board. The arch is made of concrete; the plans were drawn on paper.
It is, according to Buzzard, the indoctrination of hundreds of years of Trinitarian creeds, confessions, and
teaching that leads most modern readers to understand John to have meant: "In the Beginning was the
Son, and the Son was with God, and the Son was God." But, of course, this is not was John wrote.

Buzzard argues that John was merely using the well-exampled Old Testament tradition of personifying
God's Word (Hebrew davar) to communicate that God had a plan, and He followed that plan when
creating the world, and put that plan fully into effect by embodying it in the human Jesus. Buzzard, who
criticizes paraphrased Bibles that emphasize the pre-existence of the personal Son of God, 1 offers the
following understanding of what John actually wrote:

In the beginning there was a divine word and it was stored in Gods heart and was his own
creative self-expression.
It must first be noted that there is no justification "in the original Greek" for any capital letters at
all. The original Greek manuscripts were written in all capital letters. The first verse of John's
Gospel looks something like this in the earliest manuscripts:

One could just as easily say there is no justification for rendering "word" with a lowercase "w."
That would also be an interpretation imposed on the text. When a word is used as a name or
title, it is conventionally capitalized in English. "The Word" is understood by the vast majority
of scholars and virtually every early church father to be a title for the pre-existent Son of God. It
is a title that John applies to the Son in Revelation 19:13. The reason the overwhelming majority
of Bible scholars and translators over the years have understood this to be so is the abundant
evidence elsewhere in John's Gospel that the author understood the Word to have pre-existed His
earthly mission (e.g., John 1:3; 1:18; 6:32-33, 38, 46, 62; 8:58; 17:5), as well as other New
Testament verses such as 1 Corinthians 10:4; Colossians 1:16; Hebrews 1:2; and 1 Peter 1:11
that teach the same thing2 .
While it is true that plans, such as those for the St. Louis Arch, can be personified, this fact does
not prove that the Word in John 1 is a personified plan. If the documentary to which Buzzard
refers had said that the Arch was with someone before coming to St. Louis, if the Arch was said
to come from somewhere else, a place it had been "before," and to which it would soon return,
and if the Arch was said to influence people long ago, then it would be reasonable to conclude
that it had pre-existed its "life" in St. Louis.
It is also true that the Old Testament and the Targums often personify God's word. But it is
fallacious to use this fact as proof that "Word" in John 1:1 is also a personification.3 Scholars
generally agree that John was drawing on various Hebrew and Aramaic sources, including the
rich tradition of personifying God's attributes, but they understand that he is also expanding upon
it and changing it to suit his Christological purpose.4 The literary background provided a
framework that allowed John to communicate ideas that were familiar to his audience, otherwise
the things he had to say about Jesus - things that went far beyond what any previous writer had
written - could easily have been misunderstood:
In that sense, as helpful as the background study may be, it cannot by itself determine exactly
what John means by logos. For that, thinking through all the background uses, we must listen to
the Fourth Evangelist himself (Carson, p. 116).

In his commentary on the Gospel of John, C. H. Dodd sees at least two major statements in
John's Prologue in which the author goes beyond what had previously been said of the Word or
Wisdom.5 First, the Word was God (1:1) and second, the Word became Flesh (1:14). While both
the Word and Wisdom are always depicted in close association with God, we never find anything
remotely like, "Wisdom was God" in any previous Jewish literature. Likewise, Wisdom and
other personified Divine attributes are depicted as living among people, walking about, talking
to them, and even making friends with them (Wisdom of Solomon, 7:27), but this is a far cry
from the Word being "incarnated" in the person of Jesus.
The fact that John exceeds the bounds of all prior Wisdom literature eliminates that literature as
a restricting or defining factor in what John means by "the Word." As Larry Hurtado points out:
Whatever "background" we speak of, we should avoid simplistic notions of "influence." Healthy
religious movements use and redefine terms and categories they inherit from their "parent"
traditions, as any scholarly observer of new religious movements can attest....This is certainly
the case in the use of terms and categories in the Johannine prologue (Hurtado, Lord, p. 367).
Thus, Buzzard has failed to establish that the use of Logos in Wisdom literature should guide our
understanding of this term in John's Prologue.
The Word with God
Buzzard admits that in English, a person is not usually said to be "with" a word. But he again
appeals to Wisdom literature to argue that such was typical in the Bible. As with the background
of Logos, the fact that there is precedent for God's word or decree being described as "with" Him
does not prove that the Word in John 1:1 is an inanimate plan. One need hardly point out that
throughout the Bible - including the Wisdom books - a person is said to be "with" another person
far more often than with a plan or decree. Buzzard then argues that while he uses the Greek
pros of the Logos, "John elsewhere in his Gospel uses para, not pros, to express the proximity of
one person to another." While there is some overlap in the meaning of these two words, para
when used of persons means "near, beside, at the side of, with" (so BDAG). Pros (when
followed by a noun the the accusative case, as it is in John 1:1, 2) means "to, towards, by, at,
near" (Ibid.). Some scholars have argued that pros does not merely mean "with" in John 1:1, but
signifies intimacy (e.g. RWP) and even movement of the Word "toward" God (e.g., Vincent).
There are no less than 119 instances of pros followed by an accusative noun in John's writings in
the NT. Granted some of them are idiomatic expressions used with verbs of speech, but we need
not leave the first chapter of John's Gospel to find examples in which pros signifies a person
near or moving towards another person (e.g., 1:29, 42, 47). Buzzard has seriously
misrepresented the evidence.
The Word was God
Buzzard argues that "the Word was God" need not necessarily mean what it seems to say:
John is fond of the word is. But it is not always an is of strict identity. Jesus is the

resurrection (I am the resurrection). God is spirit. God is love and light (cp. All flesh is
grass). In fact, God is not actually one-to-one identical with light and love, and Jesus is not
literally the resurrection. The word was God means that the word was fully expressive of
Gods mind.
In an effort to prove that "the Word was God" is nothing more than metaphor, Buzzard once
again relies on limited examples of similar uses elsewhere in the Bible. The problem is that
while "is" may function in metaphoric language (as in "all flesh is grass"), it does not usually
function that way. As we have discussed, above, prior use does not require present use. Thus,
when Buzzard concludes that the "word was fully expressive of God's mind," he is making a
non-sequitur.
Buzzard goes on:
It was in His heart, expressive of His very being. As the Translators Translation senses the
meaning, the Word was with God and shared his nature, the Word was divine. The word,
then, is the divine expression, the divine Plan, the very self of God revealed
The meaning the Translators' Translation senses is not that the Word was a plan in God's heart,
but rather that pre-human Son of God had the same nature as His Father. A plan, no matter how
grand, does not share the nature of the one formulating it. Translations, like the one Buzzard
quotes that render the Greek theos n ho logos ("the Word was God") as "the Word was divine"
or "what God was the Word was" are merely trying to bring out the meaning in English that is
clear in the Greek: The Word is God in every sense "the God" of John 1:1b is, but is personally
distinct from him.6
Buzzard says of the translation "the Word was God:"
And so the Greek might be rendered, if one has already decided, against all the evidence, that by word
John meant a person, the Son of God, alive before his birth.
It must first be noted that "The Word was God" is what the Greek actually says, so it is hard to fathom
how Buzzard can complain about it. Buzzard says that we must "allow for Hebrew idiom," but in all his
examples, not one includes a metaphoric declaration that a plan or decree or word is God, or shares His
nature. Yet, this is the very proof that he needs. Simply because other literature may, at times, personify
God's word or one of His attributes does not mean that such is the case in John 1:1, where - beyond all
prior precedent - the One said to be "with" God is also declared to be God. Buzzard's paraphrase: "and
was his own creative self-expression" does not rest on any evidence presented in his paper, but rather on

Buzzard's presupposition of Unitarianism.

Same Old, Same Old
Buzzard next launches into a weak attack on the Trinity. He rounds up the usual suspects (i.e.,
verses commonly used by anti-Trinitarians), but adds nothing to what has been said before. I
will not address them here, but will provide links to other pages on this website where each is
addressed in some detail. Be sure to read the Other Views Considered sections (if any),

particularly those dealing with Jehovah's Witnesses. While the Witnesses believe that the Son
pre-existed, they deny the Trinity and base their arguments against it on the same verses Buzzard
mentions here.
John 1:1
John 17:3
John 10:33
1 Corinthians 8:6
Buzzard also throws in a few strawmen along the way, the most glaring of which is:
The great difficulty which faces those who say that there was a God the Father in heaven
while God the Son was on earth is that this implies two Gods!
He acknowledges elsewhere that Trinitarians do not believe in two Gods, so he must know that
all his arguments proving there is one God will be readily endorsed by Trinitarians. Indeed, the
Trinity would be Tri-Theism (belief in three Gods, similar to the Latter Day Saints), were it not
for our conviction that the Bible teaches that there is only one God. Again, only if one assumes
Unitarianism at the outset can one use the Shema or Isaiah 44:24 as proof that God is one
Person.
Early English Translations
Buzzard attempts to justify his position by quoting several early English translations. He points
to what he says is the uniform use of "it" in reference to the Word in John's Prologue prior to the
late 16th Century:
Here is a very remarkable and informative fact: If one had a copy of an English Bible in any of the eight
English versions available prior to 1582, one would gain a very different sense from the opening verses
of John: In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. All things
came into being through it, and without it nothing was made that was made.
All things came into being through it [the word], not through him. And so those English versions did
not rush to the conclusion, as does the King James Version of 1611 (influenced by the Roman Catholic
Rheims version, 1582) and its followers, that the word was a person, the Son, before the birth of Jesus. If
all things were made through the word, as an it, a quite different meaning emerges. The word
would not be a second person existing alongside God the Father from eternity. The result: one of the
main planks of traditional systems about members in the Godhead would be removed.

If what Buzzard says here were true, we should not expect to find many citations of John 1:1
prior to 1582 as a proof of the Son's pre-existence. But the opposite is the case. Quotations
from the early church fathers, alone, are sufficient to establish that from the earliest days of the
Christian era, the Son's pre-existence as the Logos was widely taught and believed.7 But what of
the eight translations to which Buzzard appeals?.8 The use of "it" in these translations has
nothing to do with the translators' understanding of the Logos as an impersonal plan or the
alleged nefarious influence of the Rheims version. Instead, it has to do with the common usage

of "it" in the 16th Century and before. The Oxford English dictionary defines "it" as:
The proper neuter pronoun of the third person singular. Used originally of any neuter
substantive; now only of things without life.
Buzzard is guilty of a semantic anachronism. He assumes "it" was used in the same way in the
16th Century as it is today. The translators were simply following the usage of their day, using
"it" as the grammatically correct pronoun with the neuter antecedent noun, "Word."
English in an "inflected" language, a feature it inherited from its Middle English and Old English
forbears. Modern English has lost many of its inflections, but prior to the 17th Century or so, it
retained its inflected character. In inflected languages, nouns and pronouns exhibit different
endings and forms, depending on their case, number, and gender. Gender agreement is an
important grammatical characteristic of inflected languages. That is, if a noun is feminine, any
pronoun referring to it must also be feminine. But noun gender is often not related to the gender
of the noun's referent. Indeed, impersonal nouns are masculine or feminine as often as they are
neuter.
Old English grammarian, Ann Curzan, provides the following example:
Seo brade lind ws tilu and ic hire lufod.
(Literal translation:) That broad shield was good and I loved her.
In Modern English, "shield" is an inanimate object, and the proper pronoun for it is "it." But in
Old English, "shield" is feminine, thus the pronoun referring to it is "her." That does not mean
that shields were thought to be alive and female; it was a purely grammatical feature of the
language. Similarly, "it" was the proper pronoun for grammatically neuter nouns, even when
they referred to personal beings ("wife" in Old English is neuter, for example).
Interestingly, the Old English translation of John's Gospel by AElfric actually breaks gender
agreement:
Ealle ing wron geworhte urh hyne; and nan ing ns geworht butan him. t ws lif e on
him geworht ws; and t lif ws manna leoht (John 1:3-4, Euangelium secundum Iohannem: The
Gospel of Saint John in West-Saxon. Bright, J.W. (ed.). The Belles-lettres series. Section 1. English
literature. D.C. Heath & Co.: Boston/London, 1904).
In Middle English there was an evolution away from the Old English noun genders and toward
natural gender. Thus, "shield" became neuter, and "it" (or "hit") became its proper pronoun.
However, Middle English inherited its pronouns directly from Old English. And along with
them came gender agreement. Thus, when a noun was normally impersonal, like "word," it was
perceived as a neuter noun, and "it" was its proper pronoun - even when the referent was a
person.
The first Middle English Bible is that of Wycliffe. His translation was from the Vulgate, and the

NT appeared in 1380. Revised versions began appearing in 1385. While some have claimed he
used "it" to refer to the Word in this version,9 this may not be the case. It reads:
All thigis weren maad bi h.
In Middle English, the third person masculine pronoun was "hym" or "him," and the neuter
pronoun was "hit." I have been unable to determine whether h is an abbreviated form of "him"
or "hit," but the English Hexapla of 1841, which includes the 1380 Wycliffe translation, has
"hym." In any case, Wycliffe's interspersed gloss on John 1:1 reads, "the word, that is, God's
Son," and the 1385 edition has "hym" as well.
The Coverdale Bible of 1535 reads, "all thinges were made by the same," which is a neutral
translation that avoids both a grammatical faux pax and calling the Word an "it."
Below is a graphic image of the first page of John's Gospel in the 1560 Geneva Bible.

As you can see, the translator's notes in the margins clearly indicate that they understood "Word"
to be a title for the pre-incarnate Son of God.10 The introductory comment to Chapter 1 reads:
"The divinity, humanity, and office of Jesus Christ." The marginal notes read:
In the beginning - "Or, before the beginning"
was the Worde - "Christ is God before all time."
and that Worde was God. The same was - "The Sone is of the same substance with the Father."
The English Bibles prior to 1582 that use "it" to refer to the Word are simply following
contemporary usage for the third person singular neuter pronoun. As we have seen, some Bibles
prior to this date broke the grammatical requirement of gender agreement to use the masculine

pronoun. Others included explanatory glosses that make it clear that the translators did not
regard the use of "it" even worthy of mention. The eight translations to which Buzzard refers
were all made by staunch Trinitarians who understood the use of "it" was purely a grammatical
nicety of their day.
What the Scholars Really Said
Buzzard says, "Contemporary scholars are coming to the same conclusion about Johns opening
words." This makes it sound as though there is a growing consensus of Unitarian understanding
of John 1:1 among modern scholars. This implication is simply wrong. While scholars can be
found that argue this view, there are plenty of others that have a very different understanding
(e.g., Richard Bauckham, Larry Hurtado, Martin Hengel, N.T. Wright, Ben Witherington III,
etc.), and Buzzard stacks the deck when he ignores them.
Scholarly citation is a form of an "argument from authority." Such an argument cannot establish
the truth or falsity of a given assertion; it can merely lend credence or cast doubt. Sound
arguments from authority will consist of an accurate quotation from the scholar in question,
which entails insuring that the context of the authority's statements are consistent with the
argument being presented, and that contrary statements in the same passage are not removed
with creative use of ellipses ("..."). Further, the scholar must be a recognized authority in a field
that pertains directly to the assertion being made.
When Buzzard cites scholars that support the his view, we must first establish that the scholar is,
indeed, a recognized expert in the field of Biblical Studies, and that he or she has been quoted
accurately. When given careful consideration, many of the scholars used by Buzzard do not
actually constitute a sound argument from authority. I'm not suggesting that no scholars may be
found in support of his understanding of John 1:1, but these are in the minority and often have an
anti-supernatural bias which prejudices their views - indeed, some are so liberal that Buzzard
himself would disavow most of what they have written, except the few points in which they
agree with him.
Robert J. Miller
The Complete Gospels
Buzzard mistakenly cites him as Ed Miller. The Complete Gospels is the work of the Jesus
Seminar. It would not surprising to find a translation conducive to a purely human Son from a
group of liberal scholars who, for the most part, argue that Jesus was a largely misunderstood
Jewish rabbi or sage, whose earliest followers gave confused and altered accounts of his life,
who performed no real miracles, did not rise from the dead, and was not exalted by God, who
probably does not Himself exist. Nevertheless, Miller actually supports the traditional
understanding of the Word as the pre-Incarnate Son. His use of "divine word and wisdom" is, as
he explains, an attempt to render the full meaning of the Greek Logos into colloquial English.
But nowhere does he suggest that it does not refer to the Son. Indeed, he says, "the word is
identified with the person of the Son of God in verse 14."
Hugh Schonfield
The Authentic New Testament

Schonfield, author of "The Passover Plot," advocates a malign version of the "swoon theory" in
which Jesus plots his "resurrection" with Judas. Schonfield does not believe the Bible is the
word of God, indeed, he denies that God even exists. His presupposition of naturalism is the
only foundation for his view that the "Word" is a personification.
William Barclay
Commentary on the Gospel of John
Buzzard seriously misrepresents Barclay by his selective quote:
The Word, said John, became flesh. We could put it in another way the Mind of God
became a person.
Anyone who has read Barclay's commentary knows that Barclay understood John to be teaching
that the Word was the pre-Incarnate Son of God. Here are some representative quotations from
his comments on John 1:1:
John was thinking of what it known as the pre-existence of Christ (p. 15, emphasis in original)..
He is saying that Jesus has always been with God (p. 16).
He is saying that Jesus is so perfectly the same as God in mind, in heart, in being that in Jesus
we perfectly see was God is like (p. 17).
Elsewhere, Barclay commends the translation of John 1:1 in Kenneth Wuest's New Testament:
In the beginning the Word was existing. And the Word was in fellowship with God the Father.
And the Word was as to His essence absolute deity.
Barclay is certainly not an example of a modern scholar who is "coming to the same conclusion"
as Buzzard about the nature of the Word.
C.C. Torrey
The Four Gospels, A New Translation
Buzzard seems unaware that his own paraphrase of Torrey's meaning supports the traditional
understanding of John 1:1. He says Torrey, "aims with this rendering to tell us that the word has
the quality of God but is not identical with God." Trinitarians do not think the Logos is identical
with God; if they did, they would not be Trinitarians, but Modalists. Instead, they recognize that
"God" in John 1:1c refers to the nature or qualities of God. This view is explained in detail
here. There is nothing in Torrey's translation or comments that suggest he believed the Word to
be anything other than the pre-Incarnate Son of God.
James Denny
Letters of Principal James Denny to W. Robertson Nicoll, 1893 1917
The same comments made about Torrey could be made with even greater emphasis about
Denny. Buzzard admits Denny is a Trinitarian, but says:
His testimony stands as evidence against a tradition of translation which has promoted belief in
the Trinity on the part of many others. Such evidence has often been ignored by Trinitarians who

are less cautious in their approach to translation

Denny's objection to the traditional translation is that in Biblical Greek, theos ("God") was not a
proper noun (i.e., the name of God) but an "appellation" of Deity. This is exactly what Greek
scholars mean when they say that "God" in John 1:1c is "qualitative" (signifying the qualities or
nature of God). Denny spells this view out in detail in the very quote Buzzard provides:
I say it as a believer in his true deity, Jesus is god (with a small g) not a god, but a being in
whom is the nature of the One God...Jesus is God is the same thing as Jesus=God. Jesus is a man
as well as God, in some ways therefore both less and more than God; and consequently a form of
proposition which in our idiom suggests inevitably the precise equivalence of Jesus and God
does some injustice to the truth.
It is not Trinitarians, but Buzzard who is ignoring evidence and being less that cautious in his
approach.
Norman C. Kraus
Jesus Christ Our Lord
Kraus does, indeed, believe that the Son of God did not exist prior to the birth of Jesus of
Nazareth. But this view is just a part of a complete re-thinking of Christian theology that Kraus
undertook as the result of his missionary work in Japan. He no longer considers the Bible
inerrant. He believes panentheism the most legitimate understanding of God's relationship to
creation. He argues that the atonement should be viewed in light of Japanese culture in which
"shame" plays an important role. He justifies this odd view on the basis that the Holy Spirit
"inspires" the reading of Scripture and so the Bible becomes a "cross-cultural" book. While
some have found various parts of Kraus' re-tooled theology provocative, most theologians have
not found it entirely persuasive.
F.J.A. Hort
Dissertations
Buzzard's quotation, removed from its context, makes it appear that Hort supports Unitarianism.
This implication is highly deceptive, if intentional. Hort is discussing the Greek monogens
theos ("the only Son, God") in verse 18 of John's Prologue. Hort argues for the propriety of that
reading (as opposed to monogens huios, "the only Son") because it admirably suits John's
theme in the opening of his Gospel. He notes that monogens is used elsewhere by John to
signify the unique filial relationship the Son enjoys with His Father.
Here is the quote with the context restored (Buzzard's selective quotation is in bold):
If we examine the combination dispassionately, it is hard to see in it anything inconsistent with
the theology of St John, unless the idea of an antecedent Fatherhood and Sonship within the
Godhead, as distinguished from the manifested Sonship in the Incarnation, is foreign to
him. This idea is nowhere enunciated by him in express words; but it is difficult to attach a
meaning to ho n eis ton kolpon tou patros ["He who is in the bosom of the Father"] on any
other view, and it is surely a natural deduction from the Prologue as a whole (Hort, Two
Dissertations, p. 16).
There are two points to stress:

1. Hort is not discussing whether the Logos is the pre-Incarnate Christ; that is a give for him
(see, for example, Hort's extended discussion of the divisions of John's Prologue, starting just 4
pages earlier, where he repeatedly uses the pronoun "He" to refer to the Logos). Instead, Hort is
discussing whether the pre-Incarnate Logos was expressly called "Son" in relation to His Father
prior to the Incarnation.
2. The thrust of Hort's argument is that eternal Sonship is in view. John may not use "express
words," according to Hort, but this is hardly a concession because he goes on to illustrate how
eternal Sonship is a "natural deduction from the Prologue as a whole."
Hort expanded on his belief of Christ's eternal Sonship in a piece of personal correspondence:
But it does not seem to me any disparagement to the sufferings and death of the Cross to believe
that they were the acting out and the manifestation of an eternal sacrifice, even as we believe that
the sonship proceeding from the miraculous birth of the Virgin Mary was the acting out and
manifestation of the eternal sonship (Letter to the Bishop of Ely, November 12, 1871).
Far from supporting Buzzard's Unitarianism, Hort's comments actually endorse the classic
Trinitarian understanding of John's Prologue. The best that can be said of Buzzard's selective
and misleading quotation is that is it a sloppy use of a scholarly source.
F.F. Bruce
Personal Correspondence
Buzzard quotes Bruce as follows: On the preexistence question, one can at least accept the
preexistence of the eternal Word or Wisdom of God, which (who?) became incarnate in Jesus.
This quote comes from personal correspondence between Bruce and Buzzard. Even as Buzzard
presents it, it certainly does not provide an unqualified endorsement of Buzzard's view ("who?"),
but more importantly, it is impossible to tell in what context Bruce wrote this comment or what
further qualifications he may have added. In any event, Bruce makes his position clear
numerous times in his commentary on John's Gospel, such as here:
The language which follows [John 1:1a] shows that our Evangelist has no mere literary
personification in mind. The personal status which he ascribes to the Word is a matter of real
existence; the relation which the Word bears to God is a personal relation: "The Word was with
God" (Bruce, The Gospel of John, p. 30).
Presenting one out-of-context sentence from personal correspondence as "the considered view"
of F.F. Bruce is simply misleading and false.
Don Cupitt
The Debate About Christ
Cupitt has become a popular source for the so-called "religionless Christianity" of postmodernism. Cupitt seeks to 'rescue' Christianity from hidebound tradition and invigorate it in
post-Darwinian modernity. His solution is reject all supernatural aspects of Christianity. He no
longer believes in a personal God: "We should give up the old realistic idea of God as an
infinite, all-powerful Person-out-there who controls all world-events" (Cupitt, "An Apologia for
my Thinking"). He does not believe the Bible to be the inerrant Word of God: "By the end of the

Eighties, however, as I moved into all-out postmodernism, I was claiming the latitude to borrow
religious symbols and themes and to reinterpret them in whatever way seemed to be necessary"
(Ibid.). He no longer believes that the Bible can be used as a moral compass: "There's no moral
truth out there, there are no moral values out there, morality is human" (Interview with Don
Cupitt, 1 Dec 2002).
Is is any wonder that someone with such presuppositions would argue that Christ did not exist
prior to his birth?
What can be said of Buzzard's claim that "contemporary scholars are coming to the same
conclusion about Johns opening words?" While Buzzard has produced some scholars who,
indeed, have come to that conclusion (e.g., Colin Brown and G. Vance Smith), the majority of
scholars he cites - when examined in context - actually have reached a very different
conclusion. Some have abandoned the Bible as their sole rule of faith and their presuppositions
preclude them from considering the pre-existence of the Son because they deny any pre-existing
entities at all, including God Himself. But most of the quoted Scholars actually understand
John's Prologue to describe the pre-Incarnate Son of God, who existed from all eternity in an
intimate relationship with His Father.
The Consistent New Testament Testimony
Near the end of his article, Buzzard asks the question: "Is John's unity with or opposed to the rest
of the New Testament?" Those looking for a discussion of other New Testament texts that
appear to clearly teach the existence of the Son of God prior to His human birth will look in
vain. Instead, Buzzard quotes three scholars (Harnack, Loofs, and Brown) who attack Nicene
Trinitarianism, but fail to answer Buzzard's question. John 1:1-3 teaches that the Son has always
been in an intimate relationship with the Father and that He was an active participant in the
creation of all things. This teaching is reinforced by such verses as Colossians 1:16-17 and
Hebrews 1:2, 10. The latter is particularly significant in that the Father applies to the Son a
Psalm that refers in its original context to YHWH. Paul and the Hebrews author do not use a
title for the Son, like "Word," but simply refer to the pre-Incarnate Jesus as "the Lord" or "Son,"
so Buzzard's primary objection to John 1:1 does not pertain. In John 3:13, Jesus says, "no one
has ascended into Heaven, but He who had descended from Heaven, the Son of Man." The
claim that He has "come from Heaven" or "come from the Father" are repeated throughout
John's Gospel (e.g., 3:31; 6:38; 16:27, 28). Paul and Peter taught that Jesus was active in the Old
Testament (1 Corinthians 10:4; 1 Peter 1:11). Finally, Jesus specifically refers to His glory (John
17:5) and intimacy (John 17:24) with His Father before the world began.
Contra Buzzard, the NT clearly teaches a pre-Incarnate Son, and he has offered no evidence to
the contrary.
Conclusion
I have sought to demonstrate the sloppy and unconvincing scholarship of Anthony Buzzard in
his paper, "John 1:1 Caveat Lector." His arguments, while initially seeming plausible, actually

fall apart under scrutiny. Far from convincing us that his Unitarian interpretation of John 1:1 is
correct, his faulty reasoning and outright abuse of scholarly citation demonstrate its numerous
weaknesses.
The Unitarianism of Anthony Buzzard stands or falls in the pre-existence of Christ. Buzzard can
rail all he wants against the Trinity, like many before him. But his own Christology cannot be
proven by disproving the Trinity (if that were possible). If the Bible teaches - as it plainly does that Jesus existed prior to Bethlehem, that does not necessarily prove the Trinity to be true, but it
certainly proves Unitarianism to be false.
One must ask the question: If the Bible denies the pre-existence of Christ, why does Buzzard
have to use logically fallacious arguments and misquoted scholars to try to prove it?
Notes
1. Buzzard writes:
Paraphrased versions sometimes go far beyond the Greek original. The Contemporary English Version
interprets John to mean that two beings were present at the beginning. The Word was the One who was
with God. No doubt, according to that translation, the Word would be equivalent to an eternal Son. It
would certainly be understood in that sense by those schooled on the post-biblical creeds.

2. Unitarians, of course, have interpreted these verses in such a way as to deny Christ's preexistence, but one must weigh these interpretations individually and collectively and ask if they
are the most natural way to understand the verses in question. Further, can the Unitarian
interpretations be found throughout church history, or did they arise relatively late among certain
rationalists who founded the Unitarianism more than 1000 years after Christ.
3. In terms of formal logic, Buzzard commits the Fallacy of Limited Depth. This fallacy may be
defined as an argument that does not appeal to an underlying cause, but merely to membership in
a class. Buzzard categorizes John's use of logos, but does not prove that John is using it in the
same way that his sources did. Further, in this paper at least, Buzzard ignores other evidence
that suggests that John and other early Christians believed the Son pre-existed His earthly
ministry, which is the Fallacy of Exclusion.
4. "But in my opinion all those personifications of Wisdom have a poetic character that can in
no way be equated with the mode of existence of the Logos in John 1" (Ridderbos, p. 34); "One
must go further. The wealth of possible backgrounds to the term logos in John's Prologue
suggests that the determining factor is not this or that background but the church's experience of
Jesus Christ" (Carson, p. 116). These and other scholars note that John's linguistic background,
while certainly including Word and Wisdom, also include Prophet motifs and Biblical traditions
about the name of God and the Angel of the Lord. Focusing on just one or two of these
backgrounds leads Buzzard to draw hasty conclusions. See also Longenecker and Hurtado for
general studies on how the NT authors drew upon, and went beyond, Jewish background

material in communicating Jesus to their readers.

5. Dodd, C. H. The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel, p. 275.
6. For a detailed examination of the grammar of John 1:1, see here.
7. See here for a summary of the teachings of the early church fathers about John 1:1.
8. Buzzard does not list the eight translations he has in mind. The most often cited by
Unitarians on the Internet are the translations by Wycliffe(1380), Tyndale (1537, 1549), Cranmer
(1539), and the Geneva Bible (1557). See, for example, "What about John 1:1?" from the
Biblical Unitarian website. To these we may add the Coverdale Bible (1535), Matthew's Bible
(1537), the Taverner Bible (1539), and the Bishop's Bible (1568)
9. "The Wycliffe translation of 1380... also translated the pronoun associated with logos as 'it'"
(What about John 1:1?")
10. Bruce Metzger comments on these "noteworthy features" of the Geneva Bible:
"This Bible was furnished with a number of helps for the reader not previously available in
English Bibles. The margins contain numerous explanatory comments on difficult passages.
These are described as "brief annotations vpon all the hard places, aswel for the vnderstanding of
suche wordes as are obscure, and for the declaration of the text, as for the application of the
same as may moste apperteine to Gods glorie and the edification of his Churche" (Bruce
Metzger, "The Geneva Bible of 1560" Theology Today, October 1960).