Armstrongism rejects the traditional Trinitarian reading of John 1:1. Herbert W. Armstrong taught that the Logos (Word) was not eternally God but rather God's divine agent or thought that became incarnate in Jesus Christ. Jesus was conceived as the firstborn of God's creation, receiving divine nature through the resurrection, not as eternally coequal with the Father.

This non-Trinitarian interpretation is central to Armstrongist Christology. John 1:1's statement that 'the Word was God' is read to mean the Word was God-like or had God's nature, not that the Word was identical with God in eternal existence. This rejects the Nicene doctrine of homoousios (same substance).