our Saviour Jesus  Christ.

A

The love of God our Saviour.

B

Holy Ghost shed through Jesus  Christ our Saviour.

Here, three passages speak of God as our Saviour, two speak of Jesus

Christ as our Saviour and one has the two titles combined `The great God, and

our Saviour Jesus Christ'.  Does the apostle, by this double title refer (1)

To the Father as `The great God', and (2) To the Son, as `our Saviour'? or

(3) is the whole a title of the Lord Jesus Christ?  Readers know that The

Deity of our Lord Jesus Christ is one of the basic tenets of the Berean

Forward Movement, and so it would be natural to expect that we should be

already biased in favour of translation (3). It may be useful before

conducting an examination of

the apostle's wording here, to observe the following translations:

The R.V. `Our great God and Saviour Jesus

Christ' with the A.V.

rendering placed in the margin.

J.N.D. `New Translation'.  `Our great God

and Saviour Jesus

Bloomfield.  `That Great Being Who is our

God and Saviour'.

The Diaglott.  `Our Great God and Saviour

Jesus Christ'.

Theodoret (Antioch a.d. 386-457) wrote `He' (the apostle) `hath called

the same person the Saviour and the Great God and Jesus Christ'.  Middleton

says `if in Titus 2:13 they did not mean to identify the Great God and the

Saviour, they express themselves in a manner which they well knew would

mislead their readers, and to mislead must have been their object'.

Bishop Wordsworth says `I have observed more ... than a thousand

instances of the form ho Christos kai Theos `The kingdom of Christ and of

God' (Eph. 5:5), some hundreds of instances of ho megas Theos kai soter `The

great God and Saviour' (Titus 2:13), and not fewer than several thousand of

the form, ho Theos kai soter `God and Saviour' (2 Pet. 1:1); while in no

single case have I seen, where the sense could be determined, any one of them

used, but only of one Person'.

Green, in his Greek Grammar asks:

`What intimation is there given in Scripture of a glorious appearing of

God the Father, and of our Lord Jesus Christ in concert?'  The answer

must be `none whatever'.

Should the reader desire to pursue the arguments that revolve around

the use of the Greek article `the', the presence or absence of which plays a

considerable part in the translation of the original of Titus 1:3, he would

find great help in Middleton's treatise on the Greek article.  To attempt

such an inquiry here would be to cater for the few and to confuse the many.

The translations quoted above are fully justified, and on this basis we

proceed with our examination.  In five of the occurrences where the title

`Saviour' is used in Titus, `God' is used in three and `Jesus Christ' in two

passages, but in chapter 2:13, the apostle combines them both as of one

person `The glorious appearing of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ'.

(See Deity of Christ6).